


In Secrecy

by pensora



Category: Iron Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Amnesia, Angst, Blood and Gore, Identity Issues, M/M, Magic, Manipulation, Mental Instability, Mind fuckery, PTSD, Suicide Attempt, Torture, slow build up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-01 20:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensora/pseuds/pensora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bruised and battered body on the battlefield turns out to be Loki's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_A brother he once had, with a smile for the masses and a hammer for monsters. Thunder was in the way he spoke and laughed, but lightning was blinding him and refused to let him see._

 

He opened his eyes, but the darkness weighed too heavily on his lids. He closed them.

 

_The mother who raised him, strong and wise, love pouring from her arms. A queen in all aspects but one, as she allowed a king to command._

 

The darkness was eating at his body. There was barely any skin left, he felt. Some on his face was still intact, but in most places it was only flesh that was left, being ripped from him.

 

_The woman he had loved, with fingers gentle as the young spring, stroking carefully his wounds and scars. The promise of better times gracing her lips yet disappearing from his mind._

 

In a way, it felt like drowning in acidious venom. Like needles the foreign force made its way through and into his body, his energy, his mind, his sanctuary.

 

_A father he once thought he had, terrifying and awe inducing in his ways, tall on a throne and never, not in all of a thousand years, lowering himself to the Jötunn boy he'd called his son._

 

He was falling, and there was nothing, really, to hold onto, because what he used to love most in his life, he did not want anymore.

It occurred to him that maybe by abandoning those things, he had abandoned himself. So what did he care if he died? There was nothing worth holding onto anymore, not even himself.

He didn't stop falling.


	2. Chapter 2

A heavy silence lay on the battlefield. Hundreds of corpses, humanoids with reptile skin, were scattered on the ground. They were rotting quickly and filled the air with the nauseating odor of decay. Their black blood had clotted massively upon leaving their bodies, creating a sticky, impenetrable layer.

For a brief moment, Tony allowed himself to remember that they hadn't been drones, like most of the previous alien soldiers attacking. This time, they had been living beings. He sent his gaze over the battleground, in the hope of finding an untouched piece of frozen ground to focus on. Instead he caught sight of a particularly nasty, star shaped hole in place of the left eye of a small looking soldier. He stared at it, unable to fully comprehend the meaning of the image. He stopped himself and thought about anything but star shaped holes.

 The attack hadn't been an attack at all, not really. The aliens had just stood there, waiting motionlessly in the middle of a scandinavian ice desert. It had been discomforting to watch to the point at which fighting seemed almost like a welcome change. At one point, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent had hesitantly stepped closer. The moment he'd touched one of the creatures, they'd started attacking.

 "Creature" was a hard word, though. They actually seemed rather intelligent. The only weapons they'd carried were handguns and small daggers, but they fought remarkably well. It was disconcerting, however, that their fighting techniques and levels didn't match. They were individual beings. When looking closely, one would even be able to discover tiny details, such as necklaces, headbands, rings or bracelets, marking each soldier as unique.

 It was one thing to kill drones or robots, but it was another thing killing emotional, intelligent beings. It left a fuzzy feeling in Tony's stomach and he knew that if he wouldn't stop thinking of all that very soon, he'd have a much bigger problem than just an uncomfortable feeling. Tony cursed a hypothetical god for inventing anxiety attacks.

 

"Sir, I'd like to remind you that S.H.I.E.L.D. is awaiting your return to the base.", Jarvis said, interrupting the silence.

"Whatever", Tony answered, a bit flustered about being pulled out of his thoughts. He was still hanging after them. "Tell them I'll be there in 15'."

Jarvis responded, probably with something like "Certainly, Sir", but Tony didn't hear nor care. Instead he let his gaze wander on over the battlefield, as if hoping to find the answers to his questions there.

This whole 'attack' was ridiculous. What kind of strategy was it to just let the soldiers wait for the enemy army to buckle up? And what would they have done if earth had decided to send a missile? They would have been absolutely defenseless, gift wrapped even.

It clicked.

"Jarvis, scan for any unusual pollution of the air.", Tony assessed, suddenly very worried. Both S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers had been complete idiots to not consider this possibility. The aliens might have been criminals, sent here for sentence. Hence the light weapons. They might have been held back from moving until the stupid humans would all breathe in the poison. It all made sense.

"No pollution detected, Sir."

 

Except it didn’t.

Tony clenched and unclenched his fists. There was something very wrong about all this.

"Check for anything unusual this time. I don't care if it's a fucking fly moving oddly, I want to know.", he told Jarvis, his voice more unsure than he liked it to be.

 

Jarvis would take a few seconds, so Tony started searching the area like anyone else usually would - with his eyes. The battlefield looked like one might expect it to; It was mostly black, due to the aliens' blood, but there were a few splatters of red, probably from Hawkeye and the four S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who at least tried to help.

Safe for Hawkeye, they were all dead now, of course, and Tony tried not think about it.

 

Tony walked over the field, paying close attention to the bodies on the ground as to avoid stepping on them. His mood brightened when he thought about the possibility of finding accessible alien tech for him to take apart and recreate. 

He hadn't gone more than ten meters when he spotted a gun, split open as clean as if it had been done with a laser. He was already musing happily about its inner workings when he want to pick it up, but any and all of the joy faded when he realized it was stuck. Stuck in the cold dead fingers of a soldier.

 

Tony breathed, and when he was done with focusing on that, he stared. At first, he stared at nothing, but then the air began to move and he saw a flimmering, the air moving like on a hot summer's day.Hot summer's day in an ice desert. He stared at that.

"Jarvis?"

"Calculating, Sir."

 

Tony watched the flimmering for a while, but when nothing happened, he sat down.

"Distortion in the magnetic fields of Earth as well as small amounts of gamma radiation detected. The air particles are behaving as if heated, hence the movement in the air, yet they appear to be cold.", Jarvis finally informed him.

Tony huffed at that. All of these were signs of magic occurring, and so far no magician has come to earth to make world peace.

"Thanks Jarv. Don't notify S.H.I.E.L.D. of this, but make sure at least Cap knows there's something up." Maybe asking for back up would've been a good idea. Scratch that, it would've been the only good idea, but Tony wasn't in the mood to cuddle Fury's agents. 

It bothered him that he still had no idea why

 

Jarvis told him that everything was ready as he'd ordered it, so Tony found a comfortable position and waited. Not for long, though. It was maybe about ten seconds after he'd made himself comfortable, that very unspectacularly and with a plump sound, a form fell out of the flimmering. The air stopped moving immediately when it hit ground.

 

It was all red and bloody, but quite surely human. _Or humanoid_ , Tony corrected himself, having had enough experience with aliens to know that not everything that looked human actually was.

 

He carefully approached the figure. Human, male, or at least it looked like it. Most of its skin was just not there, and where it remained, it seemed hurt and badly damaged. It was still breathing. Tony decided to ignore any security protocol that he ever read about situations like these and turned the bloodied human onto his back. He was almost surprised when the body didn't explode or attack him or do any of the murderous things mysterious pitiful bodies normally did.

 

"Jarvis, Steve.", he ordered, focusing on the body in front of him. Quite honestly, he didn't know what to do. There were so many injuries that he didn't even know where to begin inspecting the damage. Jarvis, however, faithful as always, had already put Steve Rogers through, recognizing the urgency of the situation and thus leaving out any unnecessary pleasantries.

"Are you under attack?", Rogers asked, and his voice was all Captain, no Steve, and for once Tony was grateful for it. It made the explaining sparable.

"No, but I need a medic, and fast.", he told his team mate. A second later, he realized what this must have sounded like, so he quickly added. "It's not me, but I got a guy with his skin peeled of like a fucking banana, so tell them to hurry."

He cut the connection before Steve even had the chance to reply, but he really did have more urgent matters than politeness at his hands.

 

He disconnected the gauntlets of his suit and watched Jarvis' scan of the body progress. Half along the way he stopped in disbelief. His eyes went from his screen to the body he was kneeling next to. If he looked really closely, he could watch flesh and skin forming slowly. Magic? Almost definitely. Tony went back to reading the scans and the more he read the more he was worried.

The magician was not healing himself, he was being healed. The question was just, by whom? Tony absent mindedly studied the man's regrowing face while pondering over that. Jarvis' readings suggested that it was a foreign kind of magic, one they'd never recorded before, but on the other hand they only really had Loki's readi- Loki.

Tony almost jumped as he recognized the features. It was a bit hard to see, but the eyes were intact by then and both his nose and his cheekbones had a very characteristic form, telling features even despite their desolate state.

 

For a moment, Tony felt really tempted to just call S.H.I.E.L.D. and let them handle the situation, but  as he was about to get into an inner debate between a himself and a voice of reason that sounded like Steve, a faint cough erupted from Loki.

Tony watched with something akin to horrified fascination as Loki, still skinless in many parts, opened his eyes and stared at the sky.

 

This was him. The god who conquered earth and killed civilians. This was him, lying there motionlessly, looking confused and somewhat scared, obviously in pain. This was a dangerous madman looking like a fucking puppy and there was something severely wrong about that.

 

Tony had a few sarcastic greetings on the tip of his tongue, but they died on his lips for a reason he could not possibly fathom.

"What are you doing here?", he finally asked, flatly. Really out of character, but there was no taking it back.

 

Loki turned his head slightly into Tony's direction, though it must have caused him a massive amount of pain, judging by the huge neck wound that hadn't even started to heal. In fact, though he was still very much injured, the healing apparently had stopped.

Loki cleared his throat, and it sounded terrible. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. He tried again, and this time, it worked, though his voice was hoarse and sounded like he hadn't used it in years. "I apologize for any damage my presence might have caused on your premises, Midgardian, but I currently am not in any state to leave them."

He gave a weak smile, which was slightly creepy, for his lips still were bloodied and torn at several places.

 

"The whole innocent civilian number would've worked better if you hadn't tried to take over our world before, you know?", Tony assessed. Loki looked somewhat like a perplexed and angry puppy that is yet too weak to move its own face.

"I don't understand.", he said, looking perfectly confused. He acted it out really well, but for the god of lies that lie did seem incredibly stupid. What was Tony supposed to make of this? That it was all just a bad dream and Loki never actually came to planet earth? That Loki had a terrible and completely random case of amnesia? Tony shook his head.

"You could at least try to come up with a good excuse, this is just boring."

 

Tony enabled the comm, someone was bound to still be out in the field.

"Anybody coping?", he asked, hoping for Clint to respond. He, Tony and Natasha were the only Avengers who made it to Scandinavia fast enough to attend the battle. Natasha was okay, but Tony still didn't trust her. Rightfully so, as he thought, she was a liar by profession. A spy who had worked right under Tony's nose without him noticing. Clint might have been some sort of asshole, but considering himself an asshole, too, Tony worked well with him.

 

Of course, it was Natasha who answered his call.

"Coping. What is it, Stark?" Her voice was even and calm, as if she hadn't been fighting in a giant battle only minutes before.

He briefly considered giving her the complete summary, but instead he opted for the simple way out.

"I got a situation here, can you come?" - He gave her the coordinates.

"Coming.", she responded.

Tony turned his attention back at Loki, who was still lying on the ground, covered in a considerable amount of his own blood. With a hint of confusion Tony noticed that the god who'd conquered earth was clad only in almost useless torn scraps of fabric.  Additionally to the fresh blood, there were old stains as well, dry and of a rust red colour.

Tony thought about asking Loki about them, but said bunch of blood and broken bones had his eyes squinted together quite forcefully, as if trying to shut out the world.

For a short while, he did nothing but taking in the injuries on Loki's body, comparing them to Jarvis' results.

There were various small scratches and bruises, healed almost completely by the magic. Some of them looked old. Three major wounds that looked close to lethal covered his stomach in red, whilst seven deep sashes did did the same for his legs. Blood trickled out of all of them, all over his body, tiny little waterfalls of dirtied crimson. It was… fascinating, in a way. Maybe it was the bruised-and-battered-god trope that got to him, he didn’t really know. Didn’t give it more than a few seconds of thought either.

 

A violent cough shook Loki’s body and Tony realized he was staring. Frozen. Just sitting there. And Loki - enemy or not - was bleeding out.

 

Contrary to what some people seemed to think, he couldn't stand death. And killing, for that matter.

He opened his faceplate and started detaching his suit’s egis, all while watching Loki intently. It could still be a trap, though at that point he highly doubted it. He made sure to keep his eyes fixed on the body while he rid himself of his shirt. Ripping it to pieces was harder than he thought it would be, but he managed.

For applying pressure bandages to stop arterial bleeding, he’d need a hard small object, such as coins. Tony cursed his habit of never keeping change in his pockets and ordered Jarves to eject some currently unused metal parts out of his suit.

Jarvis followed suit by dropping several metal shreds out of a mechanism on the suit’s shoulder parts. Tony recognized the metal as parts of a missile launcher that was empty now anyway. Missile Launcher. Images of the holes it had torn forced their way back into his mind and he decidedly directed every bit of his focus on the task at his hands.

Bandage once loosely around the neck, metal part on point of bleeding, tight bandage around the whole thing. Loki flinched whenever Tony as much as poked any body part. It was inevitable, though, he had to move Loki’s shoulders and head in order to access the neck.

 

Tony worked as fast as possible, but by far not as cleanly or rapidly as he would have liked to. The bandages were messy and partially already soaked, and it stressed him out. He began talking, just for the sake of it.

 

“So not that i’m not pleased to have my favourite villain back, but what exactly are you doing here?” Loki’s breathing got more open mouthed, as if he’d wanted to reply but could not. Tony, who was just trying to find a way to bandage the still massively bleeding back and stomach, could see why that might be.

“So yeah, I see you’re not talking. Fine, that’s good, let me do the talking, I’m good at that. Have you been on earth recently?” - he waited for a second, hoping to see any reaction by Loki. The god’s left mouth corner twitched.

“I’ll take that as a no. Currently we’re being munched by aliens, in case you didn’t know that. We’re winning, of course, but Fury had to recruit some other people with fancy aliases. Most of them are real nice, but don’t even try talking to Spider Man. You’d hate the guy, he’s like a younger, more annoying version of me-”

Tony quieted when he heard someone approaching. It obviously was Black Widow, making as much noise as possible while walking. She did this because she knew that Tony would attack anyone sneaking up on him when he was in that uncomfortably alert state he always was in after battles. He was grateful for her consideration.

 

They didn’t talk when she kneeled down next to him. She did send him a questioning glance, but he only shrugged in response before returning to his patient. He was a few seconds in struggling with treating a stomach wound when Natasha dropped a bundle of clean and proper bandages into his lap. He looked up at her and she did nothing but slightly lifting Loki’s torso.

They wordlessly went on to attend to the wounds.

 

They were almost done when Natasha finally spoke up.

“The battle was gruesome.”, she said, and Tony knew exactly that she was starting a conversation in order to gain information. Black Widow would never do small talk. She was probably wondering why he wasn’t talking his ass off as usual.

 

“It was. This whole thing didn’t go as smooth as I hoped it would.” And this is all that she would get. Tony was positively surprised by her showing concern, but still he wasn’t really in the mood to talk about anxiety attacks and soldiers with necklaces.

 

She nodded, seemingly understanding. On second thought, she might not really care about his emotional problems but rather wanted to know about why he thought the outcome was so devastating. Battle information she might have missed.

“What about him?”, she asked, gesturing over at Loki. The question was clear. Why were they treating a war criminal?

 

“He needed treatment”, he answered, not really sure why he did help loki but pretty damn sure he was not about to reveal that to anyone.

She didn’t seem convinced at that, so he added: “I’m pretty sure S.H.I.E.L.D. will be more than excited to question him, right?”

 

Natasha nodded, but she seemed distracted. She was looking to the side, and when he followed her glance, he realized that Loki’s eyes were open. They were filled with irritation and something that looked like vague fear, but at least they weren’t closed anymore.

“Who-” -he coughed up blood- “Who is S.H.I.E.L.D?”

 

The two Avengers exchanged glances. At that point Tony remembered that no one but him knew about the “amnesia” yet.

“He kind of uh… doesn’t remember who I am, apparently.”, he told her, shifting.

Natasha looked pensive at that.

“Is the suit still working?”

“I used up nearly all my ammo, but otherwise yes.”  
“I alert base, you carry him there.”

Tony had wanted to reply with a joke, but he bit it back when Loki interrupted their conversation with another cough.

“Alright, see you there.”


	3. Chapter 3

The flight was unproblematic and even S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t bother him for longer than a few hours. They got a few answers and a battle report from him and then let him leave - Tony figured they wanted him well rested for the torturous meetings that were soon to come, now that they captured Loki.

 

He was halfway across the pacific when he got a call by S.H.I.E.L.D..  He was quite tempted to ignore it in favour of going home and forgetting everything, but sadly he did have responsibilities, like, saving the world, for example.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. employee he talked to didn’t say much. He just told Tony that he was needed at the Norwegian base and that he should return there immediately.

 

10 minutes later had a quite pissed Tony Stark at S.H.I.E.L.D., waiting for anyone to tell him what the hell was up. He had Jarvis check, there was nothing world threatening happening at the moment. He was close to just going home already when finally someone came to pick him up.

 

Like all S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel, the young woman didn’t talk much. She led the way while they went someplace, though Tony had no idea where. It was unnerving, really, nobody told him anything. After a few minutes of walking through boring grey corridors, the woman left him with two guys who had the build of security guards but according to her were interrogators. 

The woman had hurried off, and though she had something of a Black Widow Air, Tony missed her already.  She was cold, but at least she didn’t wear sunglasses indoors like Cooler-Than-You one and two.

 

“The prisoner refuses to talk without you present. We require you to go show yourself and then let us take over.” The interrogators just stood there, almost exact copies of each other in both manner and looks. If it hadn’t been for the hair colours, Tony wouldn’t have been able to remember which one had talked.

“Regardless of what prisoner you’re talking about, I understand that they would prefer my company over yours.”, Tony said, eying the two men as blatantly as he could. He was tired, injured, and needed to get his suit fixed. What he really didn’t want now were random people ordering him around.

“Will you be sticking to the plan, Mr. Stark?”

Tony laughed at that.

“Yeah, right.”

 

Tony felt like the conversation was over, so he stretched to get a look past them. As expected, he spotted a door there. He gestured for them to let him in, and so they did, going through a presumed dozen of locks.  Stepping inside he almost immediately heard the door click behind him, though there was no sound of locks. He eyed the door suspiciously - it wasn’t like S.H.I.E.L.D to leave cell doors open. Why would they do that? To leave Tony a fast escape?

 

“It’s normal.”, a hoarse voice from somewhere behind him remarked. He almost jumped.

“What is?”, he asked, tearing his eyes from the door and turning to Loki.

“The locks. They don’t make any noise if you access them from the outside.” Loki’s tone was surprisingly friendly. Tentative maybe, but also polite and almost respectful.

Tony looked him over.

 

The god - or ex-god? He didn't look much like a divine entity anymore - was sitting hunched over at the wall of his cell, hair covering his face, and arms crossed tightly over his chest. He was wearing plain grey clothes now, but they were so completely clean of any blood stains that it was obvious they were given to him only a few minutes ago. This was exactly the kind of crap Tony had hoped would not happen this time. He sent a glance over Loki's arms and got his suspicions confirmed. New bruises. Great.

 

“Why didn’t you talk to them?”, he asked, searching for Loki’s eyes somewhere behind the strands of hair. Not like he’d be able to recognize a lie from the god of lies, but at least it would give him a sense of security.

Loki rose his head slightly and the hair fell aside, revealing a face that looked even worse than when Tony had bandaged him. There was a small smile gracing his lips, but the places the flesh was torn and ripped made it look somewhat obscene and… not right.

 

“I didn’t want to.”, he finally responded. Answering to Tony’s questioning glance he added “They were rude.”

Tony found himself chuckling. He was surprised at that. He'd acted weird ever since the battle, but this was just… off. Was he drugged or something?

He saw no way how it could have happened, though. After the battle, Jarvis had checked for chemicals in his body and there had been none. He didn't drink the coffee S.H.I.E.L.D. had offered him, neither, so there really was no way they could have drugged him. Why would they anyway? Tony sighed inwardly. Probably he was just way too tired for any of this shit.

 

“So am I. What makes my rude better than theirs?” he asked, partly because he was interested in the answer, partly because he needed to get his thoughts off that fucking paranoia of his.

Loki shifted into a proper sitting position, straightening his back. Judging by his stiff posture, it hurt, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“You tended to my wounds. I don’t care much about manners when someone  does me a service of this kind.”  Tony noticed that Loki’s voice had steadied since the last time they’ve spoken. The few hours in between seemed to have helped.

“I’m grateful for your help, though I’m rather curious as to why you sent me to an institution that rips open any injury you treated.”, Loki added, examining Tony as if seeing him for the first time and not quite getting who this was supposed to be.

It annoyed Tony that he couldn’t suppress flinching at the information he just got. He shouldn’t be surprised or feel bad for him. Not only was it wrong, but also out of character. He had fought the destruction Loki caused with his own hands. Was it possible to be tired enough to sympathize with someone who caused such horrors? He tried forcing some memories of New York into his mind and watched Loki through images of screaming civilians and ensanguined trading cards. A deep breath and he was back in game. At least he hoped he was.

 

“Considering what you did in New York, you _are_ asking for a bit too much, don’t you think?”, he asked, watching his opposite  intently. There was no such thing as a perfect liar.

"I didn't do anything", Loki sighed. He didn't even seem angry, just genuinely frustrated. "I haven't been on Midgard in more than two hundred years. I don't even know the place you're talking about - there's really no way that could've been me."

"Yeah, right", Tony huffed, sitting himself down in front of Loki in order to face him. The floor was warm. Hot even. It didn't really make sense to Tony, but he decided to get behind this later somewhen. He found himself focusing on Loki's face, lost in thought and not really searching for anything. His gaze followed the lines and holes the wounds had torn into the pale skin. He stopped when at the end of one line, he found eyes staring back at him. There was something akin to disappointment in them.

 

"You don't believe me", Loki said, and it wasn't an accusation, not a question, just blank fact stating. 

For some reason, Tony felt like apologizing nonetheless. To that kind of look you just don't say "fuck you", you say "sorry" and then feel terrible for doing whatever you'd done. Master of manipulation, indeed. Tony shook his head, trying to get his thoughts straight.

"Why would I?", he asked, but it was hard to feel doubt, hard to remember why he wouldn't.

 

To his surprise, Loki didn't respond by defending his case. Instead he just sighed defeatedly.

"At least tell me what I'm supposed to have done."

 

Tony considered that for a moment. This conversation was leading to nothing, so he really didn't see what harm trying another technique could do. It was even the ideal solution if he just did it right.

"I could show you, we still have the security footage from that day."

Loki opened his mouth to respond, but Tony interrupted him before he could say anything.

"Let's just make a deal. You tell me what happened to you, I show you some videos. You in?"

 

Loki didn't have to think about that for very long.

"Agreed, under the condition that you show me the footage before I tell anything"

Right, that made sense. If Loki refused to talk, they'd just torture it out of him. If they didn't let Loki see it, he wouldn't be able to do anything. Tony spent a brief moment actively disliking S.H.I.E.L.D.'s methods and then nodded at Loki.

"Alright, I'll make it happen."

 

It didn't take long to convince S.H.I.E.L.D.. Tony didn't have to bribe anyone and two out of three people he talked to actually thought it was a good idea. The third one was an asshole and unblinkingly told Tony that he suspected him of working with Loki, but it wasn't like he was the decision maker anyway. The other two had the upper hand, and since they approved of the whole thing, it was going to work out.

 

At first, Tony had planned on going back to America during all that, but the two who'd supported his idea were all for him being present as well, considering he was the only one who actually got Loki talking. They said it was really clever how he gained Loki's trust by acting indecisive. Tony blessed Iron Man fans for being the blindest people on earth and agreed to come, not that the had much choice in the matter.

 

The room they ordered him to be the next day was empty except for a huge screen and six steel seats. Tony had no idea what this room had been built for originally, but considering the chains on three of the chairs, it was probably to force prisoners to watch… stuff. He preferred not to think about what kind of thing to watch required chaining to a seat.

 

The first thing Tony noticed upon entering weren't the chains or the screen, though; It was Loki, facing him and staring straight at him. He was giving Tony a slight nod while staring, which was weird, but that wasn't what was so off putting, much more it was that hunted look, that hungry look, that absolutely craving look that disappeared half a second later and was replaced by a polite mask so quick, Tony wasn't sure it actually happened.

He cleared his throat, nodded back and examined the room. It was only then that he noticed the rest of the room, the unusual interior,… Even the S.H.I.E.L.D. employee in the corner he hadn't noticed prior.

 

Tony sat down on the seat next to the one Loki was chained to and threw a glance at the S.H.I.E.L.D. guy who probably was something like a security guard with a psychology major. S.H.I.E.L.D. always had people like that during experimental interrogation with criminals. Tony had found that out when he hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D. some time ago.

 

"So. Movie Night. What are we watching?" he asked, smiling at the guard in a way he knew was annoying and would hopefully get him to start the footage as soon as possible. The man just sighed and pressed some buttons on a remote he was holding.

"News", he answered gruffly while the room was going dark and the screen lit up.

 

A news spokesman announced a special on "Everything you need to know about the Alien Attack on New York City". The report started out by showing various shots of Chitauri ships and Tony and Steve fighting. The other Avengers weren't seen much, probably due to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s influence - couldn't have Black Widow's face broadcasted all over the country.

 

The reporter started debriefing and Tony got bored. He let his glance wander over the room, let it rest on the more interesting things from time to time. The S.H.I.E.L.D. guy had a nasty habit of picking his nose, so Tony tried not to look into that direction. One time he watched Loki for quite a while, taking in simply the way the light flickered over his skin. When he looked up again, he found the guard staring at him questioningly. How long had be been watching Loki? Two seconds? Ten? Thirty? Tony had no idea.

 

He wondered for a moment if it was the lack of sleep or maybe the exhaustion of the battle that clouded his mind. It didn’t seem very likely though. He encountered both of these things frequently, so why should he suddenly start becoming all mushy?

This only really left one option; He actually _was_ drugged. Great. Just fine. Not like he had enough problems with the recent rise of alien attackers. He suppressed a sigh and threw another glance at Loki. The guy was staring at the screen in absolute stillness. His face didn’t betray any emotion - the only sign of him feeling affected was a muscle twitching slightly in his jaw. A mind reading machine or something like that would’ve been handy.

 

Tony startled at the mention of his name. “...Iron Man carrying a nuclear missile into the extraterrestrial’s portal.  The attackers…” 

Oh yes. He almost forgot. The way the government was desperately trying to hide that they shot a nuclear bomb at their own city. And he wasn’t even able to uncover this to the public, no matter how much he wanted to.  Bruce’s words still rang in his ears.

_If the only thing people can trust to defend them is a loose net of anarchistic “heroes”, they’re going to think that this is the way to go. They’ll become reckless and play hero and die. It’s more important than ever that they think the government has their back and that humanity is united in defense, even if that’s far from reality. For the sake of order, let it go._

Not that Tony wasn’t a fan of chaos, no, it was rather the countless-deaths part that held him back. It was infuriating, but it really wouldn’t have been a wise choice to start fighting the government on this.

 

The moment Tony told himself to focus and looked at the screen, the news spokesman went into finishing off the report.  _Thank whatever the fuck had made this end_.  Maybe it was the dark room, maybe all the problems piling up, but the tiredness of three days was painfully catching up with him.

“...had been given over to the authorities in Asgard. For more inf-”

The screen went black. A quick look to the S.H.I.E.LD. employee confirmed that it was him who’d cut off the record. A wave of relief washed over Tony as he realized that he could finally go back to New York now.  Tony threw a questioning glance at the S.H.I.E.LD. employee, who, upon that, coughed and spoke up. _Fuck_

“Mr. Stark, S.H.I.E.LD. thanks you for your cooperation. The prisoner will be interviewed shortly. You are free to go. “

 

Or, not fuck. Great. Pleasantly surprised, He was just about to say his thanks and go, when Loki piped up, his voice almost inaudible.

“I refuse to talk as long as he is not present.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello
> 
> I'd just like to apologize for the formatting. When I wrote this chapter I didn't really have the ao3 format in mind. Future chapters are way better regarding that. 
> 
> And I know that this chapter is rather short, but I promise next week's chapter is longer than any of the previous ones. 
> 
> On another note, thank you all for sticking with this story. You have no idea how happy your feedback makes me ^-^

Stark Tower looked as obnoxious as always, even from the distance. It gave Tony a feeling of homeliness to see the totally exaggerated font lighting up against the skyline. 

Pepper had advised him to stop repairing it after every attack, since it did nothing but telling the aliens exactly where they needed to attack, but Tony ignored that. If he wanted to be a brainless, attention starving dick, he’d damn right be one.Steve had said that though he didn’t like the Stark signet, he had to admit that the New Yorkers loved it by now and would probably be severly disappointed to never see it again.

 

Tony remembered that day fondly. It had been lovely to meet the team again. Not that he actually liked anyone but Bruce, but fighting an insane god and his alien army really made for great nostalgic memories.

Actually the day sucked, because it was the approximately 50th attack on New York in one year due to most aliens apparently believing it to be earth’s capital. Tony’s suit broke and Steve twisted his ankle. The more he thought about it, the less he wanted to remember it.

 

He landed with a speed that was probably too high, but he didn’t really care about that. His system took care of it. That’s what he liked about it all - he didn’t have to do jackshit once he was at home, and also he got to gloat at his marvelous work.

 

As soon as he was inside, his face lightened up. Ah, the bar. He’d missed that in Norway.

“Jarvis, tell me how long I got till I need to go back to the continent of crumpet eating douchebags.”, he asked while strolling over to where most of his favourite drinks were stored.

 

"To be on time for your appointment, you will have to leave in precisely eight hours and two minutes, Sir.", Jarvis answered.

Tony poured himself a glass of scotch and considered maybe going to bed “early” tonight, just for the sake of not falling over while interrogating Loki.

 

Once in bed, it didn’t run as smoothly as he’d planned and Tony declared it official: Human bodies were absolutely inferior. Of course he already knew that before that night, but right then, his body was  most presumptuously showing of one of its most bothersome flaws: The inability to, despite obvious need to do so, sleep.  If he were a machine, he could just tell his body to go to sleep mode for so and so many hours, and it'd be all right. Instead, he was forced to listen to his brain that was too haywire to do something productive but also too energized to go to sleep.

 

Currently it was rambling about Loki. _What is he doing here, What are his intentions, Is his amnesia real, Does he want Tony there because he's genuinely afraid of whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. does to him or is it just one of his schemes, Does he know how freaking weird the scars on his lips make him look,…_

 

Really, Tony's brain was chatting with itself as animatedly as if it had written permission from him to do so, though, of course, as it apparently hadn't realized yet, it did not.

 

_Was it unfair to leave for the night when he'd asked him to stay?_

Tony took a few seconds to inwardly blink at his brain. Really? Was he really considering if it was unfair to Loki, the war criminal who'd killed thousands in the course of his rampage, the god who'd tried to take over the fucking planet, to leave him alone for a night?

_But he doesn't seem to reme-_

Tony did his best to focus on the ceiling. He felt like he was burning a hole into it. He was drugged. Dangerously so.

There didn't seem to be any physical effects though, except maybe tiredness. What kind of drug could make such an odd change in the thinking of a human? What could possibly- Tony lowered a hand on his eyes. He was probably the only human in the world who could find that out so easily - one of the most advanced medi scanners in the world was only two stores down from where he was.

 

It was in a certain kind of haze that Tony entered the escalator and it was in some kind of rush that he made his way to the med lab. He kind of dreaded the result, but if this was going to make any of this easier, he'd do well to try it.

 

An hour later had him with pretty much anything you'd be able to find out about a body but still no clue. There was no drug in his system. Not even a tiny trace. Was he going insane? _Probably yes_ , he admitted to himself.

 

Following a strainful night, the morning of course sucked as well.  After getting four hours of sleep instead of the probably urgently needed five and a half he could have had, Tony felt like crap. To top it all off, he had a headache from, despite holding back, drinking too much and he had a 82% chance of being in the process of losing his mind.

 

All that didn't really help in enhancing his mood when he took off in New York. Only minutes into the flight, he calmed, though. Maybe the hippy scientists were right, and the waves of the ocean really did a wonder for one’s inner happiness, but he somehow doubted it.

He decided to not give it much thought, though. Bad idea to look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

 

When he arrived in Norway, he felt almost content. He was only five minutes late and the S.H.I.E.L.D. guy wasn’t there yet, so he could enjoy a few more moments of not-Loki time.

A game of snake, and he was as happy as one could get when waiting for interviewing a war criminal.

 

The S.H.I.E.L.D. guy took six minutes to show up and kept gazing at Tony with an admiring look in his eyes. He probably thought that Tony had been doing some world changing business on his phone before he was picked up. Developing a super suit or curing world hunger, something like that. He allowed himself a private grin. If the day went on as nice as that, he could probably manage to just actively ignore Loki’s existence.

 

Unfortunately, the interrogation chamber he was led into kind of diminished that hope.

The room looked pretty much exactly like out of a bad action movie; The walls as well as the floor appeared to be cemented. In the middle of the room, there was a table with two opposing seats. There was even the cliché little lamp on the table in the otherwise almost completely dark room.

Tony noticed with slight discomfort that the chair further from the door offered various options to chain down a person of humanoid build - it looked a lot like you’d imagine the steel version of a electric chair.

 

Looking around, Tony spotted the one thing that he was looking for: A third chair. He’d eventually realized that there apparently was some sort of steely thing embedded in the wall. Further inspection proved him right in the assumption that there was a small, somewhat hidden button. He played around with it for a bit, watching the bench go in and out of the wall. It was a cute little mechanism, and he was tempted to take it apart out of sheer boredom. So far, he and the silent S.H.I.E.LD. employee who'd brought him in were the only occupants of the room.

Apparently, it was a trend at S.H.I.E.LD. quarters to be even later than Iron Man himself.

 

He spent some time inspecting every single recognizable mechanism in the room. He even found the camera that looked almost exactly like a speck of dirt on the wall. The S.H.I.E.L.D. employee threw him a few glances somewhere between disapproving and confused, but Tony decided to ignore him.

It took ten whole minutes for the door to open.

Tony was about to make a comment on that, but when he saw the state the little group coming in was in, he decided against it.

Five heavily armed men were pulling Loki into the room - the god was blindfolded and shackled at any body part that could possibly be used even slightly for more than breathing. They even gagged him, for fucks sake.

All those precautions didn’t seem to have worked very well, though. Currently, Loki was obeying every tug that was given to his chains, but there were clear traces of struggle.

One of the men pulling Loki had a split lip, another’s face was marred by a cut reaching over the entirety of his cheek, Tony spotted a swollen eye on the one directly in front of Loki and all their faces were grim even for S.H.I.E.L.D. standards.

Loki looked worse than any of them, though. The wounds from the day before of course hadn’t healed yet, but it appeared to have gotten worse. Some of the wounds were ripped open and there was a trickle of blood rinsing from his nose.

 

So Loki had struggled against their attempts. Tony wondered why. It was obvious that he, in his apparent magic-free state, wouldn’t be able to overpower five grown men. Even with whatever he used to cut the one man’s cheek, it was absolutely clear that he had no chance. They guy just didn’t know where to halt.

 

The men shoved Loki into the un-electric electric chair and strapped him down quickly and roughly. Loki didn’t even flinch when they snapped the metal bracelets down on his wrists. Even getting the gag and blindfold literally ripped off didn’t get a rise out of him, despite the fact that obviously some scars were opened forcefully in the process. Tony had a feeling that this was how Loki showed defiance rather than submission. It was hard to not be at least slightly impressed at the display.

 

One of the guards sat down opposite Loki. Tony spent a few seconds staring in disbelief. The interrogator a guard? Tony felt less and less assured about the situation every minute. The guy might have been bulky and strong, but he didn’t look anywhere near fit for the intelligent thinking interrogators normally had to do.

 

The four other guards as well as the man who’d led Tony here disappeared through the door. It closed with the disquieting absence of sound. For a few seconds, it was absolutely silent in the room.

Then it clicked. The interrogator flicked on the lamp on the desk and directed it straight at Loki’s face. Seriously?

The god blinked.

Tony was almost expecting the man to bang his fist onto the table and yell   _“Why did you kill your husband?!”_.

In reality, though, the guard did nothing but staring into Loki’s eyes, as if hoping to unnerve him. Loki stared right back and didn’t bat a lash.

Tony probably would’ve laughed at the display of the movie like scene if it hadn’t been for the fact that this was the interrogation of Loki, the god who had singlehandedly led the very first extraterrestrial attack on New York, with that apparently opening the gates to earth for every insane alien empire ever.

 

After a few minutes, the guard spoke up.

“Talk”, he said simply.

Loki looked like he was about to spit into the man’s face. He didn’t though. Instead, he got his face under control again and answered.

“Do you really think your glowing iron will make me tell?”, he said, his voice strained with forced politeness. Tony took a look at the shackles around Loki’s wrists, and, indeed, they bore a red tint. It cost him some effort to remind himself who it was who was being tortured here - it was okay, right? Because Loki had killed enough people to compensate for a lifetime of torture.

 

“I think it’s only a question of time.”, the guard assessed, and Tony was getting worried. The man didn’t seem to know an awful lot about interrogation.

 

“Loki?”, Tony asked. The interrogator eyed him like he just grew a pair of horns, but at least Loki looked at him like he was about to actually listen what he had to say.

 

“Look, we had a deal. You know full well who has the upper hand here, so let’s not pretend you have a chance. Either you talk or I’ll leave you to S.H.I.E.L.D. for the rest of your pathetic life. Got it?” Tony had no idea where that just came from, but he was proud of his efforts when he saw Loki paling.

 

The god’s voice was uncharacteristically weak when he answered.

“The great hero Iron Man would leave an innocent man to die in a place as rotten as this?” His tone lacked any wit or venom it usually held.

  
Tony felt almost bad. Almost.

“You killed thousands.”

He watched the god clench his fists.

 

“I did not. I do not know who the imposter was who rampaged in your city, but it was certainly not me.” Loki seemed too quiet. It was almost like he was actually as clueless as he acted. Maybe his amnesia was real? It seemed convincing enough.

 

Tony almost hit himself. What was he thinking? Of course, Loki was lying. There was no way he just suffered convenient amnesia of exactly the event he wanted to forget. No fucking way. Tony wouldn’t let Loki go through with that.

 

“Give me one reason any of us should believe you.”, he asked,  not even having to fake the frigid tone his voice took on.

Loki flinched. His body seemed lost and tiny in the huge chair of steel.

“I-”, he began. “You could ask-... I would never-” He swallowed. “I-...”, his voice cracked.

The room was silent for a few seconds.

Then, the interrogator spoke up.

“Yeees?”, he requested, voice tainted with unveiled sadism. Tony decided to ignore the trembling of Loki’s fists. The bastard fucking deserved it.

“I don’t have one.”, Loki finally said, defeat in every aspect of his expression.

The interrogator grinned.

“You don’t have what? Come on, speak in sentences! Or are you too weak for that?”

Ok, so maybe the guy was overdoing it a bit. Whatever. Tony decided that he still didn’t care.

Loki seemed to tense up even more.

“Oh, mute now? Did we go too hard on your delicate princess ass?”, the man asked, lowering the volume to a whisper. Tony was just about to subtly tell him to tone it down a bit when Loki rattled against his chains.

 

“You don’t have a reason to believe  me,” he pressed out. “Not a single one.”

If there was one response Tony hadn’t expected, it was this. The unforeseen answer seemed to fill the room with the kind of silence you could cut with a knife.

Loki’s strained breath was the only sound occasionally penetrating it.

 

They sat like this for a while and it was almost surreal. Well, it kind of was, actually.  A bulky security guy, Iron Man and the God of Mischief sat in one room and nothing happened. Also this weird smell, kind of like after battles, lay in the air. Weird, if you considered it.

 

Tony’s thoughts returned to the interrogation when he noticed Loki’s breath going faster and faster. Almost like he was going to hyperventilate or something. Tony threw a questioning glance at the interrogator. The man just shrugged and grinned.

 

“The only reason I’m not answering your questions,” Loki finally huffed out, interrupting the silence. “is that you’re not asking any. There’s really no need to apply additional heat.”

Tony almost choked when he looked down at Loki’s wrists. The metal was glowing hot red and was probably cooking the god’s flesh.

_So that’s where the battle smell came from._

The interrogator grinned once again and Tony felt sick.

 

“Enough.”, he told the man. He didn’t like Loki, really not, but this was just inhumane. Tony had had his fair share of the smell of singed flesh, and shit like that wasn’t supposed to happen anywhere off the battlefield. Not like The S.H.I.E.L.D. guy seemed to care, though. He just sat there, unmoving, staring at Tony with eyes devoid of any understanding.

“I said _enough._ ”, he repeated through gritted teeth. He noticed Loki coughing silently. Probably choking on his own blood that was still rinsing out of several openings in his face, in the process ripping open even more scars and _for fucks sake this was way too much_.

“Turn it off already, you sadistic fuck!”, he yelled at the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. The guy nearly fell of his chair, but Tony was not about to enjoy it, not when there was the smell of singed flesh in the air and the sound of screaming enemy soldiers, burning in a fire the humans had set off, not when there were images of sentient beings reduced to ashened corpses were pushing themselves into his mind.

Tony took a deep breath and refocused on the situation at hand. The S.H.I.E.L.D. guy looked like he just saw a ghost, but at least the chains seemed to be slowly losing their glows.

 

“Alright”, he said. “Let’s try this again. Loki answers every question nicely like he’s supposed to and we don’t violate the geneva protocol again, okay?”

 

Loki looked pale, but gave a faint nod. The interrogator just sighed loudly. Content, Tony put his chair closer to the table. Maybe it was a good idea to play some kind of mediator. He didn't really feel comfortable with assuming that role, but dire times called for dire measures, didn't they?

 

The S.H.I.E.L.D. guy spoke up first.

"How did you get to earth this time?", he asked, and Tony marveled at the question. It actually made sense to ask that! Maybe the guy didn't suck 100% after all.

 

"I fell," Loki answered. "I know neither where from nor what had led to this."

 

"Why did you attack earth in the first place?"  Tony forgot any and all appreciation he had for the guy. Loki would not change his answer, that much was obvious. If Tony hadn't known that S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't employ interns, he would have betted a lot on this man being one. Tony didn't even have to listen to know what Loki was going to say next.

 

"I already told you that I did not. It must have been an imposter."

 

Of course. The S.H.I.E.L.D. guy didn't seem to have expected that, though. An ugly grimace set itself onto his face.

"Look, princess.", he gnarled, leaning forward over the table. "How about this. I'm not going to punch your face in for not telling me about New York and in turn, you will spill about Asgard."

Loki had a sour look on his face, but nodded anyway.

 

"Legend has it you had a wife in Asgard. What happened to her?"

Tony frowned. This guy was not interrogating Loki, he was just trying to verbally fuck with him. Loki, however, seemed to have regained his composure. If it hadn't been for the rather unhealthy teint he bore, no one could've told that he'd been tortured so recently.

 

"She fought bravely, but eventually died at the hands of an enemy of mine."

 _And the award for best composure goes to the alien god in grey,_ Tony thought.

 

The S.H.I.E.L.D. guy seemed pensive for a moment.

"So," he then began, face suddenly lighting up like a christmas tree. Not a good sign.

"You killed her," he grinned. "By making that enemy, you ganked your own wife. Great going, princess!", and he was practically beaming. Tony felt like punching him. This was really the wrong thing to guilt trip Loki about. It was beyond Tony's comprehension how this was anything but torture by now.

He was just about to say something when Loki spoke up.

"You presume I killed thousands of your own, Midgardian. Why is it that the death of one Aesir matters more to you than that?"

 

Clever. The interrogator was too dumb to just respond with a question and there was no other way for him to answer without openly admitting to be a sadistic dick bag. He was trapped in his own words, and somehow Tony really couldn't get himself to help him out. In fact, he kind of enjoyed the dumbstruck on the man's face. The gears in the oaf's head were obviously turning wildly as he was probably trying to come up with a comeback that wasn't "your mom".

 

Seconds ticked by while the man struggled to think. When his expression finally did change, Tony got the impression that this was not about to end well.

 

"You know," he began, hateful grimace stretching over his features. "We know that you're a frost giant. What we were wondering is: How did that go about? Frigga fuck one of them?"

 

Loki didn't react. Just kept on staring at the interrogator. The man smiled, slightly unnerved.

 

"Though we had problems imagining that. I mean, Frigga's human sized, right? So how did that giant-"

 

Tony was on his feet and gripping the man's arm faster than he could think.

"Enough.", he hissed, meeting the interrogator's eyes. He seemed angry, but not angry enough to attack Iron Man, even without the suit.

 

Tony bored his fingers into the man's flesh one last time before letting go. The second his hand was off the arm, however, there was the noise of chairs falling over and a body hitting the ground.

 

The interrogator lay on the ground, face down. Loki was kneeling on him, glowing metal in his hands. The god had the gleaming pieces on his previous tormentor's neck faster than Tony could react. The sound of agonized screams filled the small room.

 

The moment Tony unfroze, he went to grab the god from behind, but as he was only about a meter from him, Loki, without turning around, spoke.

 

"Move one step closer and I will force the iron down his throat."

 

 _Fuck._ Tony stopped in his tracks.The metal was gleaming hot, the idiot must have turned it on again when Tony wasn't looking. He wouldn't survive getting his throat burnt out. The metal pieces were much too hot. Actually, it was a surprise the things didn't melt.

 

Or, it occurred to him, they actually had started to melt, which would explain Loki getting out of his chains.

 

"What do you want, Loki?", he asked, trying to save some time.  Of course he could just wait for Loki to leave and then go get his suit. It wouldn’t be a problem to disable him with one or two precision missiles then. On the other hand, he might accidentally kill Loki, considering the way he apparently was missing the godly healing thing. Tony really hoped S.H.I.E.L.D. would come up with a good plan while they were watching this all on safety cam.

Maybe they could set off the fire extinguishers on the ceiling in biblical flood mode, possibly cooling the metal with that.

This had a chance of working, but he had no way to communicate this to the S.H.I.E.L.D. employees before he got to his suit. The only two things he could do were hoping that S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn’t fuck up and waiting for the moment to grab his suit.

 

"I will leave this facility. No one will step close enough for me to see and no one will attempt to stop me. If anyone violates my terms, the dungeon keeper will die."

 

Loki heaved the seemingly unconscious interrogator onto his shoulders. Hunched under the weight of the man, he caught Tony’s eyes.

 

The effect was irrational and immediate. Images from New York flooded Tony’s min. His brain was frantically comparing the two situations, then and now, somehow trying to find the resemblance, but it seemed futile.

They were not fighting a crazed megalomaniac anymore, not a god trying to take over all of humanity, this was just a man trying to get out alive.

The power hungry glance had gone, and in it’s place stood only weariness and fear, making the previously so impressive god seem simply tired and out of place.

 

None of them said anything when Loki turned around and left.

 

Tony tensed up the second Loki’s figure disappeared from the door frame. He’d have to wait about twenty seconds, then it should be safe to get the suit. If he just did it right, he could still fix this situation. No one had to die.

 

His thoughts were disturbed by the sound of shots being fired.

  


 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Tony made for the door immediately. His mind ran an ever same mantra of _please let it be precision guns please let it be precision guns…_  

It hadn't been precision guns. Tony felt himself slowly shifting in battle mode, shutting off feelings and thoughts when stepping closer. A few agents were yelling, but what they were saying didn't matter. What used to be the interrogator's face was mostly red and not much else, torn flesh bleeding angrily. His chest wasn't moving. Two agents were leaning over him, trying to make him breathe.

 Loki was on the floor, trashing. He seemed to have been hit badly, as well. The shoulder area of the grey prison clothes was soaked with blood, but that didn't stop him from hitting the agents trying to pin him down. Feral screams escaped his throat. In any other state, Tony might have found the raw desperation disturbing, but as it was, it didn't seem anywhere near important.

 Tony kneeled down in front of Loki. The moments seemed to pass in slow motion as he went to hover over the god, pushing a knee into the abdomen of the body underneath him. The agents were holding down the hands, and now he had the legs and the torso, but Loki didn't stop trying to tear himself free. Instead, he seemed to be flailing harder even than before. They held him pinned on the floor for a few long moments, Tony trying to meet the god's panicked glance. It took some time, but, eventually, green eyes with tiny pupils set themselves on Tony's. Shuddering breaths shook the god's body. _Be calm_ , Tony tried to tell him, _be calm_ , but his voice betrayed him. Loki seemed to understand, though. His eyes flickering to Tony's lips, reading the words from where they'd never left. The god breathed a few times, inhale too sharp and long. His lids fluttered shut, accentuating the red encircling the eyes.

The body underneath him went numb. There was a lot of background noise, Tony then noticed. He must have pushed it out of his mind. He got up. Someone was chaining Loki and then it didn't take long for someone else to pick him up. The agent was struggling, so Tony went to help him.

It was only after a while that Tony realized that they were walking. He was still not entirely there mentally. Bruce had called this "Battle Trance". A fancy name for something as simple as shutting down everything but the mechanics, really. 

He had a way of getting back, though. Focusing. He sent the focus to his hands, with which he was holding onto an unclothed arm. Loki's. The skin felt rough and demolished under his fingers. The agent nudged Tony to the left then. They were probably going back to the prison cell, Tony assumed. Judging by the looks of it, on which he now decidedly focused, they were already near the cell Loki had been in when he was first brought him. Most hallways looked the same at S.H.I.E.L.D. quarters, but this one stood out by being of a slightly darker grey. Probably it was built earlier than the other parts of the facility.

They turned left once again, and the sight of the exact corridor they were looking for appeared. Dropping Loki into the cell then was a rather unceremonious process.

Finding out what to do next proved to require a much bigger effort, though. He'd have to talk to people. Once out of the cell, he turned to the young S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who'd carried Loki with him. Speech came to him automatically and without much thought.

"You don't happen to know who's in charge?"

 "If you wish, I can direct you to Mr. Skallagrimsson, sir."

Tony nodded. The agent gave him a clearly strained smile before he turned around and led the way.

Getting to the office took a while and Tony was kind of glad for it. He urgently needed the time to mull things over in his head. 

It was pretty obvious what had happened in the hallway. Some S.H.I.E.L.D. agents or, who knows, maybe some superior desk monkey, had decided that just trying to shoot Loki with whatever weapon they could find was a good plan. Obviously, it was not. Loki had probably used the interrogator as human shield, then got hit because he was still too weak to hold up the body of such a large guy. The rest, Tony saw. 

The interrogator was quite surely dead. The realization lay in Tony's gut like a stone. The guy had been an asshole, no doubt, but nobody really deserved to be used as a human shield. Fucking guy probably had family and stuff.

He wanted to feel angry at Loki, he really did, but he could not. This whole disaster was Loki's fault, of course, but Tony could not help but compare it to the time he was in Afghanistan. When he was trapped, he killed some "bad guys", too, to get out. This was the natural escalation of the panic of being imprisoned and having seemingly no chance to ever get out. 

Nobody in America except Tony himself blamed him for killing his captors in Afghanistan. In fact, most blamed the captors. Would the same brand of justice be applied to this situation, S.H.I.E.L.D. and maybe even Tony would be to blame. Actually, pretty much everyone in there. Everyone, except Loki.

 In this case, though, the captive was not an innocent man. Even if he might not remember it, he was guilty for a variety of severe crimes against humanity. They had to find a way to lock him up without giving him the chance to strike ever again.

 

Tony almost bumped into the agent before him when the guy suddenly halted. They were in front of a door now, outwardly not differentiable from any of the cells.

 "I don't think you noticed, but I sent message to Mr. Skallagrimsson that you were coming," the agent informed him. "He'll be expecting you." With that, the young man hammered a code into a pad on the wall next to the door. The door opened.

 

Tony gave the kid a nod,  hoping it would seem more friendly than still-too-out-of-it-to-speak. Then, he stepped in. 

The room was furnished exactly like the S.H.I.E.L.D. leader offices in North America - barely at all. Tony knew that all the paper files were stored in some back room that was probably accessible by knocking three times against a bookshelf or something like that, making room for the really important stuff in the office. Namely one shelf, a desk with a chair, a computer and a whole load of empty space. At the desk sat a pale blonde man of maybe forty. The moment Tony closed the door noisily, the man got up. 

“Mr. Stark,” he said. “How unpleasant that we meet under such unfortunate circumstances. I presume you already know my name?"

 

Tony didn't like how Skallagrimsson was taking the conversation into his hands already. He also didn't like the way the man's tongue slid across his bottom lip whenever he was talking, almost as if he was lusting over something. Skallagrimsson might have been dressed nicely, but if you dared look longer than half a moment, you'd easily discover that there was nothing that really seemed nice about him. Which, of course, should have been obvious if you considered his occupation. 

Tony nodded, having almost forgotten the question by then.

 

"I'm glad you came to me. In fact, I was already considering sending out for you." Skallagrimsson slicked his hair back. "We need to talk about the prisoner." 

A comment on the whole he-who-must-not-be-named attitude of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s lay on Tony's tongue. He suppressed it, though. He just wanted to get out of this room as fast as he could, and that would mean having to cooperate, if he liked it or not. He opened his mouth to agree, but Skallagrimsson interrupted him, his words sounding so incredibly polite, they ended up seeming more offensive than any vulgarity could have been.

"When he first came in, we subjected him to a variety of tests. Our readings made it very clear that there was no trace of magic left in him. In the light of recent events, however, our readings proved false-"

"What happened today," Tony interrupted him, "had nothing to do with magic. The interrogator overheated the shackles, they were melting. It must've been easy enough to open them then."

 Skallagrimsson smiled. The longer this conversation lasted, the more Tony felt like the prey of some doctor titled carnivore.

"Why, so what they say is true? The great Iron Man, collaborating with the enemy?"  

Tony huffed. 

"You and I both know that the shackles are easily overheated in the hands of an over eager interrogator. No need to accuse me of treason."

 A grin spread over the man's face. Tony decided to dub him Lecter, because at this point, this was the only acceptable association. 

"Tony… I can call you Tony, right?", the man practically purred, taking a subtle step towards him. "The shackles don't over heat. That, simply because we have no heat mechanism installed. There's really only two ways the situation could have played out. Either, the prisoner used one of his tricks, or you, my friend," - he inserted a dramatic pause - "are imagining things."

Well, that was a pile of bullshit if Tony ever heard one. Lecter was lying. Obviously.

"Is there a reason behind this whole intimidation speech? Just get to the point.", Tony requested.

"Why, you're quite the eager one," Skallagrimsson chuckled. Straightening, he added: "Your equipment is far more advanced than ours. We need you to test the prisoner for any possible magical remainders."

"Tell me, Skallagrimsson, why would I help you?" 

Once again, the man chuckled deviously-

"See, Tony, it's obvious those new friendly kinds of interrogation don't work very well. We will just continue using our traditional, well proven methods until we know everything about the prisoner."

 "You're violating the human rights declaration. This could come to bite you in the back later." Tony was trying hard to keep his voice controlled and calm, as if he knew what the fuck he was doing.

"The prisoner is not human."

"He's human enough."

 

And fuck, he had never planned on defending Loki, but torturing people was just plain wrong. There was a reason this kind of stuff was outlawed. He was not fond of violence. He would've much preferred if he just knew that Loki was locked up for the rest of his life or somehow amending for the huge amount of problems he'd caused. Tony recognized though, that most people would think it just to punish Loki physically. He had taken many lives, and so they saw it fit to take away as much of his as possible. The want for torture really only came from the desire for vengeance, which, as Tony had found out numeral times, normally didn't turn out very well. 

The people would actually support S.H.I.E.L.D.'s case, so there was no running to the presses.The government was affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D., so that one was ruled out, too. And because no one else was doing it, Tony had to be the one sticking up for a crazy war criminal. He was trapped by the circumstances, he could not just walk away and ignore that shit like this was happening.

"We plan on making him suffer the punishment for his crimes, regardless of his race. If we find out about his magic without having to tear every word from his lips, however, we might think it over. Perhaps, we'd even stop the interrogation completely.", Skallagrimsson gave Tony a sly smile. 

Both of them knew, Tony had lost.

 

 

The god of mischief and mayhem lay in a bed in guest room B on Tony's living floor. Of course, Tony had been hesitant to put him in a warm and fluffy bed, but the opportunity to passive aggressively piss S.H.I.E.L.D. off could not be missed.

Loki was still unconscious. The stunt he'd pulled earlier appeared to have taken quite a toll on him. Tony would’ve loved to leave the god right there and go fix his suit or finish the upgrade for the exact machine he needed to test Loki, or get a drink, or sign some paper work. Or do anything, really, but staying in there and having to fix a god’s body. There was no way around it, though. Loki was still bleeding merrily from his shoulder and Tony presumed the bullets that hit him were still in there. If he wouldn’t do anything, the god might bleed to death. However much Tony would’ve liked to not care, he could not bring himself to just let Loki die.

 

Standing in front of the bed, however, he realized another problem. He didn’t know how to treat a gunshot wound. 

“Jarvis? Make that rolling Dummy wannabe from my work shop get me the first aid kit", he requested. After a few moments of consideration, he added: "And please check if Bruce is around. If he is, tell him to come here."

"Certainly, sir."

 

Tony did the whole abc thing and stopped the bleeding. As far as he was concerned, that was everything he could do.

Luckily, it didn't take long after that until Bruce was standing at Tony's front door.

 

"Bruce, my friend!", Tony exclaimed. Bruce grimaced.

"It's never a good sign if you call someone 'my friend'," he said. "What do you need?"

Ah, good old Banner. Helpful and to the point. Tony found himself desperately wishing that more people like him existed.

 

"Okay, I need you to not freak out," he said, leading his somewhat worried looking friend through one of the living rooms. "Seriously, if you break my new windows i'll break your spine. Anyway, so you know about the attack in Norway, two days ago or so?"

Bruce nodded.

"After that some kind of portal opened and for some reason, Loki saw it fit to fall through it."

Bruce stopped in his tracks.

"He's in my guest room now.", Tony added.

"Why?"

"Uh yeah about that.", Tony said. Pushing open the door to guest room B. "He's kind of bleeding to death right now, so I'd be glad if you could help me with that. I'll explain later"

 

Bruce took a deep breath and straightened his posture. He then took a determined step into the room. Following suit, Tony was quick to stroll back over to Loki. The god looked as dead as ever, if not even paler.

 “Jarvis?”, he asked. “Get Bruce everything he asks for.”  He could virtually feel his friend’s nervousness flooding the room, so he added jokingly: “Except maybe a pony,” and gave him a smirk.

 Bruce didn’t pay him any attention though. With admirable professionalism, he was walking towards Loki. His eyes were trained steadily on where Tony had clumsily added compression bandages. Not once did his gaze flicker at Loki’s face as he sat down on the chair next to the bed and started examining the wounds.

 After Tony had explained the nature of the injury, Bruce just grimaced and asked Jarvis for the instruments he’d need. Rolling-Dummy-wannabe accomplished a promotion to being the nurse who’d bring stuff, but only because Tony  himself didn’t know where they were.

 

Bruce wasn’t a surgeon, Tony knew that. Didn’t have the right education for that. He might have been able to treat basic problems, but a gunshot wound should’ve been way over his level.  However, Tony had been thankful for this kind of service from Bruce way too many times to actually question how his friend had gained these skills.

Bruce seemed to be doing fine during the surgery. His expression was a bit strained, but mainly it was focus that was painted all over his features. A quick glance to Loki ensured that the god was terribly not-fine, but that was nothing new. With the situation at a calm, Tony stood up. 

“I’ll be in the workshop if you need me. Jarvis is at your service,” he informed Bruce, already halfway out of the room.

 

Closing the door behind him felt like leaving reality behind. He was done. Loki was looked after, he was in his tower, he was not currently engaged in a terrifying battle. Everything was good and he felt himself slipping away from the world. He was in a transdimensional place of silence and blissful ignorance. His workshop was a not far away paradise and he was going there with the steps of a man who was floating somewhere between passing out from lack of sleep and running a marathon just for the sake of it.

 His suit was a red and gold anthem to the escape he needed. It felt good to replace the missiles he’d shot without thinking where they had hit, to let his fingers lead the delicate tools to replace burnt out wire without remembering the weapons it supported, to let his hands do all the work and let his mind shut off. He lost himself in the stream of cogs and wires, giving them all that was left of his conscious thoughts. His body went into a constant rhythm of work only interrupted by the occasional realization that the black on the edges of his sight had gotten darker once again.

 At one point the numbers on the blueprints stopped making sense, though. The dark edges took over shortly after.

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

Tony woke up to the contended humming of rolling-wannabe-dummy. He didn’t feel particularly well rested, but at least he’d finally gotten to sleep. He hadn’t really been planning on it, but damn, if he hadn’t needed it.

He opened his eyes just to be greeted by the sight of the very same robot who’d awoken him.

“Hey there lil’ buddy,” he murmured, still somnolent. “You definitely need a name soon, don’t you,” he added, slowly rising from his seat. The robot gave an affirmative sound Tony was pretty sure he hadn’t programmed.

Tony gave him a pat and then leaned over his workbench to examine his work from the night before.  
It all looked pretty alright, considering the state he’d been in when doing it. The suit looked ready for the weekly apocalypse again and even Tony himself didn’t feel all too terrible.  
His body was aching all over from the uncomfortable sleeping position and he probably looked like hell, but he felt energized enough to spend his day ignoring how shitty his situation actually was.

“Jarvis, how long was I out?”, he asked casually, picking up the things he must have wiped off the table while having his head resting there.  
“Nine hours and thirteen minutes, Sir.” Tony almost dropped the screwdriver he was holding.  
“Nine hours? Rolly, get the chaos on the floor for me, I’ve got to go.”  
The small robot hummed.  
“Jarvis, status update.”, he ordered while making his way towards the guest rooms.  
“Doctor Banner is currently working in your living room. The surgery has been successful and Loki appears to be in the process of waking up. “  
“Thanks.”

When Tony entered, Loki still appeared to be asleep. To be frank, he even seemed kind of dead. The paleness of his skin rivaled the white of the bandages across his torso and his body barely rose with breath. His eyes were closed and still rimmed with dark blue lack of sleep and violet bruising. He looked far from dangerous and even further from a villain.

Tony tried his luck and cleared his throat.

He barely suppressed a sigh of relief when Loki’s eyes snapped open. Having to find another way to wake him up probably would've reached ridiculous levels of awkwardness.

Said god was propping himself up then, despite being in plainly obvious pain. He kept his eyes trained at the covers.  
Only as he was leaning up against the board of the bed, he regarded his environment. His face betrayed no emotion as his gaze traveled the room. When he set his eyes on Tony's, he stopped though.

Loki's mouth dropped open and one corner twitched.

"Would you look at that, Tony Stark;", he said quietly, voice dripping with an unreadable mixture of emotions. "Another prison,", he continued, face breaking into a manic grin. The parody of a contented sigh breezed over his lips. "I enjoy this cell's decoration, maybe I should stay here for a while."  
The grin stayed frozen on his lips. Tony watched in discomfort as any and all of the shaky joy of insanity drained out of it. Left was a dark and somewhat terrifying shadow of a smile, clinging to his features like good dreams gone wrong.  
"Why, In fact", the god added, lower lip trembling, "I might just stay forever."

His voice cracked at the last word. Loki exhaled, forcing his eyes shut.

Tony didn't speak. There was not a phrase in this world that could make this alright. Any word he would say would only make matters worse.  
The only thing he felt compelled to do was to leave, and so, he did.

He found himself again in the kitchen, making hot chocolate for whatever reason. The absolute sincerity of the moment he had witnessed had stricken him.  
Of course, he'd already known that Loki was what one would call broken, all the crazy super villains were, but Tony had never dared imagining how ugly the shreds might be.

Shaking his head, he urged the thoughts away and dropped a spoon into the mug. For a moment, he considered his work. He had just made his nemesis hot chocolate. To stall, of course, he told himself, but he knew well enough that there was more to it. He found himself not caring that maybe, probably, actually, he was sympathizing with Loki. At this point, he kind of felt like at least someone should.

And also, what would one nice gesture matter? Loki had been treated like shit for who knows how long. It would do no harm to treat him like a sentient being for once.

With the mug in his hands, he made his way towards the guest room. He knocked twice, just to make sure that Loki had actually heard him. When there was no answer, Tony entered, hoping that this time, the result would not be as traumatizing.

Loki appeared to have calmed. He still seemed worn out, but his gaze was clear and conscious as he turned it on Tony.  
They regarded each other only for a short moment, but it was enough for Tony to assess that Loki still was as fucked up as before and merely hiding it. The god's expression seemed too smooth and emotionless to be anything but a coverup.  
And honestly, he still looked like crap. Even the best pokerface could not hide red rimmed eyes or the dark beneath them. Or the fuckton of wounds, for that matter.

Tony pulled himself a chair next to the bed and sat down. He then held the mug out to Loki somewhat awkwardly.  
The god, understandably, seemed somewhat suspicious. He didn't take it, at first. Only upon Tony giving the mug an insistent little shake, Loki reached out for it.

Their fingers brushed for a moment as Loki's hands closed around the warm mug and Tony was surprised to find out that his guest villain's skin was stuck in the last ice age. He didn't comment on it though, just drew back his own hands kind of sheepishly.

Loki apparently had decided to ignore the touch and instead was eying the beverage with absolutely irrational suspicion. In fact, it looked kind of as if he was trying to figure out if this was poison or- right. Space viking.

"It's called hot chocolate.", he explained. "Basically consists of milk, sugar, cacao and happiness".

Loki snorted - it sounded almost amused.  
"You serve happiness to the man you think destroyed your city?", he asked, side eying Tony.

"You looked like you got a dementor's kiss, figured you'd need it," Tony answered, shrugging. The confused silence from Loki's side was highly reassuring. It felt good to know more, to have the upper hand.

When the silence threatened to become awkward, Tony spoke up.  
"Some kind of monster," he explained, watching Loki flinch for no apparent reason. "They suck your soul out by kissing you. Not as sweet as it sounds."

Loki looked pensive for a moment.  
"These are fictional, no?" , he then asked. Tony, of course, was very attempted to tell Loki that no, of course they were real and yes, they attacked everything in their line of sight. He didn't though.  
"They are," he said, simply, wondering if he was losing his edge.

"Are fictional stories more popular than legends in Midgard?"

Tony snorted at that.  
"Fiction is more popular than the other stuff, but I'm pretty sure legends do count to that genre. I mean, have you heard them?"  
He looked Loki up and then added, smirkingly: "Especially the religious ones. Yours are still the unbeatable number one."

This seemed to spark Loki's interest.  
"Oh? What do you tell of us then?", he asked, mirroring Tony's playful tone. Thinking back on it, the guy was mirroring a lot of Tony's behaviours. Stark didn't need to be a genius to figure out what his captive enemy was doing there - trying to get him to like him. Fair enough.

"I like that one in which you and Thor end up posing as Freya and her maid just to fake-marry a giant. Sounds like a huge mess with Mijölnir and all that, but Thor must have looked smashing in a dress," he recounted, glad he'd read through the lore after Loki's attack on New York. Said god didn't seem too convinced, though.

"It sounds amusing if you tell it like that.", he simply said. Tony decided not to dwell. He didn't know what the hell he was doing, but he would definitely call it information gathering and he'd prefer to end up with actual information, not a bloody nose.

"Then… how about Sleipnir? Real, too?" Tony knew it was the wrong question to ask the moment it left his mouth. Loki paled visibly and stared at the wall in a way that could only be described as consternated.

"He is," the god answered curtly. Tony decided to leave it at that. Mythology obviously wasn't a very happy subject for Loki and he saw no reason to be mean.

Well, except the New York thing, but- thinking about it, he did feel a violent urge to immediately stop doing so. To just ignore and forget. Trying to call up images from that day felt like going through a mental meat grinder only to receive a battered polaroid. It was like the reverse version of "Don't think about a pink elephant right now.", because Tony absolutely wasn't able to not think of other things than New York. The robot needed a name, he needed a drink, S.H.I.E.L.D. sucked, Loki was looking at him kind of oddly…

Loki who was in the bed of one of his guest rooms. It was no time to be pondering on… whatever had rattled him. He couldn't remember what it had been, but he had the feeling that it wasn't important. It was a bit unusual for him to be spacing out like that, but he lacked sleep pretty much any second of his waking life, so maybe that was just catching up with him. Again. Weird time for that to happen.

For a moment, he considered that maybe he shouldn't have just let go of the idea of having been drugged just because some test said he wasn't. His machines could be wrong. And maybe the drug even was still in action.

Or maybe he was just slowly going insane. His machines were wrong presumably once a decade and it was statistically near impossible that it was happening with that particular issue. He probably actually was losing his mind. He didn't even remember why he got so worked up about spacing out, but that made it even worse. What the hell was happening to him?

"Are you alright?", Loki asked, interrupting Tony's train of thoughts. Politeness aside, there appeared to be something close to genuine concern in his voice, but Tony couldn't have cared less right then. What did that asshole think? Great, amnesiac crazy ass villain returns from space viking prison or wherever the hell he had been, comes and messes up Tony's life as if it hadn't been complicated enough already - And he was supposed to be alright?

Tony felt anger boiling up inside of him, justified or not, he could not tell, nor did he care much at that moment.

"Remind me again which one of us is bed ridden?", he snapped. Loki twitched. Actually twitched. For some reason, it riled him up even more. How dare he twitch, how dare he play the victim? How dare he play the more affected?  
"Remind me who came here and made everything worse?" he continued, unable to stop himself. "We're being attacked from all fucking sides and now, just right fucking now is the time you decide to fall from the heavens and start your ludicrous schemes, tearing off a war with S.H.I.E.L.D. and fucking everything up? "

"What's your game? Why would you bring on shit like this and then ask if everybody's okay? What the fuck is your game?"

Loki was silent. His wary glance was fixed on Tony and he had assumed the allusion of a one armed defensive stance, every muscle tense and ready to fight back.  
When it became apparent that Tony's question hadn't been rhetorical, Loki spoke up.

"I did not mean to cause any distress.", he said, voice quiet as if fearing that Tony might snap again any second. "I would leave, if I could."

For a moment, they simply looked at each other. Loki's eyes were not moving, fixed absolutely motionlessly to Tony's. They were calm in a distressed way, somehow, and disquieting in a calming way. Not much about them made sense, but then again, nothing about this situation did.

At that realization, suddenly, like a faucet being turned on, the anger and frustration began flowing out of Tony. With every exhalation, his rage was carried away, leaving him with a slowly clearing mind.  
It didn't take him long then to realize that he was standing and that his fists were clenched and that the hand of Loki's hurt left arm was clutching to the blanket.

Loki apparently realized, too, and let go. He, simultaneously with Tony, assumed a less tense posture.

Sighing, Tony let himself fall onto the chair. He didn't look at Loki anymore, but he could feel the god's glance on him.

"Look-", Tony began, not even sure himself how he should explain his outburst. "This all it's- it's not the point, okay? It's all been piling up those few days, weeks, months - years actually. This whole situation you - or your doppelgaenger - left us, it's a huge fucking mess, you see? The thing in New York opened some kind of portal and… The destruction, the deaths, the battles earth has to face every other week now - it's sick. Really. And if that was you, you are every ounce as terrible as people say you are. But if that wasn't you..."

He took a deep breath and, finally, got himself to look at Loki. The god was regarding him attentively, but other than that, there was nothing to conclude from his expression. Tony felt his mouth going dry at what he was about to say.

"If you really had nothing to do with this, I'm sorry as hell. You'd deserve none of what we're putting on you."

Loki looked pensive for a moment.  
"I appreciate what you are saying, Tony Stark," he then said, giving a small nod.

Tony let out a breath he hadn't even known that he'd been holding.

"Good, glad we got that settled."

For a moment, silence reigned. Tony quickly found entertainment in the medical report he spotted on the bedside table. This thing was a blessing; He'd get to leave this conversation relatively un-awkwardly and also get to find out just how bad S.H.I.E.L.D. had fucked up by shooting.  
He gave Loki a smirk.  
"I don't suppose you'd mind if I stop talking for a few minutes, right?"  
Loki just snorted in response and let himself sink back into the mattress.

Tony took a while to get into the whole medical jargon, but after that, it was easy to immerse into the text. He had no idea why Bruce had written (or apparently partly downloaded) it, but it was informative and he couldn't complain. The information, however, was less pleasant. In short, it explained that while the bullets had not hit any bones, they had severly damaged the left Deltoid. Bruce prognosed that if Loki was anything like a human, it would take at least three months for it to heal completely.

Tony, needy for anything to distract him from reality, read through all the extra pages that detailed what exactly Bruce had done to the damaged area all while explaining where the procedures came from and how they had evolved and how certain applied medical means worked. It was pretty obvious that Bruce had added these pages solely for Tony's curiosity.

He put down the report after about half an hour. Glancing at Loki, he realized that the god looked pretty much asleep. His eyes were closed and his breath was calm.

"Loki?", he asked quietly, probing. Loki didn't stir.

Tony got up and was about to leave the room, when Jarvis spoke up.  
"Call from S.H.I.E.L.D. incoming."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The origin story of Sleipnir isn’t as humorous as some people seem to think it to be. For reference, here’s a blog post recounting the whole thing:  
> http://artificial-realm.tumblr.com/post/69270367788/we-need-to-talk-about-loki
> 
> For reference on the time Thor and Loki dressed up as women, check out Wikipedia’s synopsis:  
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Erymskvi%C3%B0a#Synopsis
> 
> The deltoid is the muscle right where the shoulder and the arm connect - It's visable as a small bump. And yup, the one who'd shot had lousy aim. Was an office worker, actually.


	7. Chapter 7

Tony froze in his step. S.H.I.E.L.D.. Seriously? He felt annoyance creeping up on him, but it was most decidedly justified. Sighing, he dropped back into the chair.

"Jarvis, where's Bruce?", he asked, hoping for an answer like «two stories down and watching a documentary about jackhammers«.  
If there was one thing Tony really didn't want to hear about at that time, it was another attempt of Bruce's to get him away from S.H.I.E.L.D.. Not when he was feeling so much doubt himself and the only thing that kept him working with them was necessity. "Currently in ear shot if you were to leave the room," Jarvis informed him.  
"Eugh. Alright, put them through," Tony ordered, throwing a cautious glance at Loki. The god still seemed fast asleep.

To Tony's great dismay, it was Skallagrimsson at the other end of the line. It was like S.H.I.E.L.D. had suddenly decided that the other S.H.I.E.L.D. leaders weren't asshole-ish enough and that only really the Norwegian Hannibal Lecter would do, even if he had nothing to do with the issue.

"Our sensors have picked up unusual radiation in Aurora,Texas. We need you to investigate.", the man said, employing his usual purring voice.

"I'm not sure you remember, but I'm currently pretty busy with the god of mayhem and destruction, so no thanks," Tony countered, shooting another glance at the occupant of the bed beside him. Loki, luckily, still wasn't stirring.  
"Look, if you really need an Avenger to check it out, get Wasp or Captain America or Hawkeye or hell, even Spiderman. There's really enough of us on this continent and I don't have time for this."

Skallagrimsson didn't miss a beat.

"Don't think you have any power over our decisions whatsoever," he said. "If we say it's you who should go, you will, regardless of what you might think would be more convenient for yourself."  
The remote urge to strangle the guy slowly arose in Tony and he couldn't help but wonder if Skallagrimsson was purposefully trying to get murdered.

"You don't need the Avengers for this. Get one of your freaking agents on the case. We're here to defend the planet, not go and be dogs in your power play."

"But oh, Tony, you are. You will do as we say, as long as you are still interested in our legal support." Again, Tony felt a rather distinct desire for strangling a certain someone. This time though, the feeling was based purely on helplessness.

Tony had a contract. He was supposed to deliever goods for defense and pretty much everything he did was funded by the government. Legally, it was absolutely in the state's right to take away the Iron Man suit as it was a privatized and inadequately registered part of the defense system.  
S.H.I.E.L.D. had enough influence to stop the government in its demands. That's why so many heroes, Tony included, took part in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Avengers protocol instead of fighting alone. Being part of S.H.I.E.L.D. meant being tolerized by the bureaucrats above.

So in short, he was doomed to be their puppet for the time being.  
He had one valuable chess piece though: Loki. The god was in his hands and that gave him power. A reason not to leave and a free license to dick around for a few months, if he did it right.

"We'll have to comprimise," he said. "I really can't leave right now."

Skallagrimsson, probably finally seeing how stupid it was to send away the crazy super villain's guard, paused.

"How long will the tests take?", he asked then. Big mistake. The guy probably realized it the moment it had left his mouth, but he should have set a time frame instead of asking. If he would have set one, it would have been a further chance to prove their supposed superiority and limit Tony's time immensely.

"I still need to finish the update on the machines," Tony responded. "The tests themselves are extensive and will take a long time, so I'm thinking…" Remembering the medical record, he grinned to himself. "At least three months."

The tests could have been finished within four days, but S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't need to know that.  
Tony could figuratively feel Skallagrimsson's discontent seeping through the connection, so, to be safe, he added:  
"I thought during the wait, I'll just prod him a bit. Test everything. This is a magical opportunity, he's the perfect lab rat. You can have him again after I'm done."

The words felt appalling in his mouth and if it hadn't been for the enormous strategic advantage they gained him, he would have taken them right back.

The approach worked. After seeking reassurance that S.H.I.E.L.D. would definitely receive all the knowledge gained in the tests, Skallagrimsson agreed to letting Tony do his own stuff unless the planet was being attacked. If he actually believed the crap Tony had fed him or if he was just playing along, Tony didn't know. It didn't matter much anyway.

The conversation was finished soon after and the absence of the comm made for a uncomfortable silence in the room. If Tony focused, he was able to hear Loki's breath, but there was nothing else to hear.

Tony hadn't wanted to get himself that deep into shit. Really. He had been ready to drop a white lie or two in order to get S.H.I.E.L.D. off his neck, but he'd never planned on doing anything as drastic as this.

As it was, he was harbouring a war criminal, and that not only because of strategic causes, but also for a big part because he was sincerely doubting that said god was the same guy who commited the crimes.

He was well and truly fucked.


	8. Chapter 8

When the door closed with a click, Loki kept his eyes closed. He didn't stand, he didn't speak, he didn't stir at all; He simply lay there, letting everything sink in.

 

_Labrat._

 

If it hadn't been so terrible, he'd have laughed. It felt like any new captor of his had a unique little surprise to make their prisons more exciting. But well, of course there were only so many options for inflicting pain. Sooner or later humiliation had been bound to come. And the Midgardian? He was going to be creative. Would unite the two and run tests unworthy of any living thing. Would he do so with the assumption that Loki was immortal? How long until he would notice that nothing was healing and that his test subject's body was falling apart? Would he stop then, or would he use him to death?

He was fairly sure the latter would be for the best. If it were to come within the next three months, as the mortal had hinted, it would be a welcome end to all of this. Never before had the promise of death seemed so sweet. The price to pay for it was terifically low as well. What were another three months of pain if it would mean escaping? He was nothing if not enduring. And it wasn't like death would be the end of him. No, it would finally open the gates to any place he wished to go.

Death would not send him to Valhalla. Valhalla was for the good, the heroes, men like Thor and Odin. He would be sent to Hel, the place for the bad and those who were nothing at all. The realm's ruler, Hela, she would be bribable. She had seemed the type when Loki had last talked to her. If she were to let him go, he would be free.

The possibilities then would be endless. Fleeing to Nidavellir or Alfheim, he could do it. He could escape. He could run away and build a nomad life far away from prisons and executioners.

 

Content, he opened his eyes. His plan was sound and he had yet to encounter a better cause to die for than freedom itself.

Taking in the cold white ceiling, he tried his best to keep the thoughts of doubt at bay. He knew there were possibly severe flaws in his plan - he had no idea how death would affect his magic, after all, or what Hela would ask of him in exchange for the right to walk free - but those were problems to consider later. Dying was the only plan he had, and currently, he would be best off focusing on that.

He was propping himself up slowly, trying to not hurt his shoulder. The Midgardians of Shield had aimed badly, but the injury was a painful one nonetheless. The wound appeared to have been treated, though, and it did not look like the clumsy work of Tony Stark. In fact, most of his major wounds bore some sort of professional bandaging.

Loki raised his wrists to look at them. The skinless patch felt as if burning on, but it was covered well enough in white for it not to be visible.

Of all kinds of injuries, he disliked burns the most. Too many knew of his weakness and equally too many had explored it deliberately. Would Stark do so, too? He had seemed soft during the interrogation. And hadn't he mentioned a "geneva protocol" forbidding… what? He hadn't said. It was most likely just a protocol detailing how interrogations were supposed to be led. Or was it forbidding violence on prisoners? Midgardians sometimes were soft like that.

Either way, he was not keen to find out. Even though he, naturally, didn't like the pain of lethal experiments, Stark having mercy would only mean having to find another way to kill himself.

He wondered where his pride had gone.

Really, if he could just do it fast, he might be able to blessedly ignore how shameful taking one's own life was. If he could just do it fast…

The window caught his gaze. Would it be locked? Probably yes, he thought as he got up, but it would be worth a try. A wave of nausea washed over him as he urged his body to move, but he decidedly ignored it. Doing this quickly would make it easier. No rituals, no dramatics, simply opening the door to escape… He could stop himself from considering the graveness that normally came with death.

This wasn't the end after all. It was just like a regular prison break.


	9. Chapter 9

Tony felt a slight electrical buzz needling through his fingers when he touched a wire for the suit's new mini missiles. Which was weird, because it wasn't actually connected to a power source.  
Naturally, he touched it a second time straight away. The result was the same, but this time, it was stronger. Scientifically, the whole thing was impossible. Assuming the wire had been charged, the electricity should have unloaded into Tony's fingers. All of it. It shouldn't have buzzed the second time.

Tony's interest was sparked. Throwing caution in the wind, he touched it again. This time, the electrical buzz was even stronger. His hand was still twitching involuntarily when he asked Jarvis what the hell was going on.  
"There appears to be an electrical overcharge of the majority of rooms on this floor. It seems to be extending in a circular fashion from the guest wing, in which I register a power out."

Tony was going to ask Jarvis why he hadn't said so sooner, when the information sunk in. Guest wing. As in place where the crazy magician was stored.  
He took off, cursing his own tower to be so damn huge. It took him at least twenty seconds to get to the guest room. Twenty seconds too many, in his opinion. Loki must have already escaped.

  
Arriving at the door, he all but rammed it open, stumbling into the room and almost falling.  
He felt a million tons lighter when he saw Loki, still there. Not escaped. It took him a moment, though, to realize that something was off nonetheless. The way he was kneeling, face to the window, it seemed unnatural, somehow. He was hunched over, too, and trembling.  
"Loki?", Tony asked, tentatively. The god froze for a moment, before being shaken by a violent cough. His one good arm was reaching up, probably to his mouth. He let it rest there for a short while. When he let it fall down on his side, there was blood on his hand.  
What the… Tony stepped closer to him, calling out again. "Loki-"

The god rose. Slowly, swayingly, but he rose, turning in the process. He never really came to a halt though. Even as he stood, he wasn't able to keep himself stable. Blood stained his lower lip and it didn't surprise Tony when he suddenly fell towards him.  
He caught Loki with ease, though in a somewhat awkward position. Standing sideways, he supported the god's torso with both his arms, leaving Loki in an absolutely ridiculous posture. Really, if he hadn't been so busy avoiding the estimated gazillion of wounds he could accidentally worsen, he probably would have laughed about it.

As it was, he just tried getting Loki leaning against the nearest piece of furniture without causing a load of bruises.  
Good thing the bed wasn't far from the window. While Loki was too heavy for Tony to lift onto the bed with a hold as bad as his, it was easily possible to settle him down on the soft rug surrounding it, making him lean against the bed frame. Tony sat down opposite of him.

  
It took the god all of two minutes to get his eyes open. When it did happen, it wasn't a nice sight. There was a sort of feral panic in his stare and he was beginning to shake slightly. He only calmed upon noticing Tony - doubtlessly intentionally his breath slowed, the shaking came to a stop and a mask of impassiveness encompassed his features. It was a quick and impressive transformation, but it was hard to buy, of course, after the sight Tony had witnessed just seconds before.

He wasn't sure what exactly it was that he had seen, but he didn't understand it and that alone managed to unnerve him. That, and the fact that apparently random power outs were a thing at Stark Tower now.  
He gave Loki a few seconds to breathe before setting up conversation, spending the time assessing Loki's physical state. The verdict wasn't very good, of course, considering the eye catching patches of scab covering his entire body and the red trickling out of the corner of his mouth. Tony didn't even bother checking about the mental state, as it was very apparent that the god wasn't in the best of mindsets, what with his reaction to waking up.  
"So what happened?", Tony eventually asked, gesturing towards the blood still sticking to the god's lips and chin.

Loki gave him a wary glance. Then, absent mindedly wiping his mouth with the bandages on his wrist, he let his eyes focus on a point in the distance somewhere over his opposite's right shoulder. There was a crease in his brows suggesting irritation. Assuming that the expression was genuine, it appeared he was trying to work out what had transpired himself. He sounded tired when he finally spoke.

  
"I'm afraid I don't know," was all he said. Tony gave him a disappointed glance. He'd hoped for a better answer.

"Oh, don't do this to me," he complained. "My scientific curiousity is dying of malnourishment right now. Didnt't you do anything?"

"Nothing of significance," came the indifferent response. Which was even more disappointing because this time, Tony _knew_ that it was a lie. Random power outs just weren't a thing that happened at Stark Tower. 

"What kind of insignificant things trigger something like this?" he asked, vaguely gesturing towards the blood staining Loki's face.

"Attempting to open a window, apparently." the god answered, catching Tony's glance as if daring him to comment. He, of course, did.

"Let me guess, you wanted fresh air?" 

"Yes", Loki deadpanned, as if entirely serious. Tony raised his eyebrows.

"Are you _trying_ to make me send you back to S.H.I.E.L.D.? " 

Loki held his gaze for a moment, but soon let his eyes flicker downwards. No answer came. 

"Are you?" Tony asked again for empathy.

The response stayed the same. It was disappointing, really. He'd hoped to get at least some good answer out of the god, but like this? It was hopeless. Loki was sulking and it appeared he wasn't going to stop any time soon. Fucking norse gods. 

Tony stood, huffing. 

"And they call you Silver Tongue," he remarked sarcastically, leaving the room without turning around. 

As soon as the lock clicked, a sigh escaped him. Talking to Loki for some reason always was exhausting. Even if he used his bullshit business technique of leave-them-with-a-bitter-taste, it was harder than talking to anyone else. Maybe because he wasn't used to having long term prisoners. Maybe because he still wasn't sure if Loki was a crazy war criminal or not. Either way, it was a good reason for a drink.

He poured himself a tripple whiskey, just because he could, and settled into his workshop. Grabbing a random unidentified item from the high security vault, he sat down to work, sipping on his drink.

The item was, simply put, a stone. Of greenish colour and emitting an eery glow. It was unlike any of the other power stones the aliens had brought with them, though. This one had come in the hands of their most menacing enemy yet during the most devastating battle the Avengers had ever fought.  
An army of lizard like humanoids veiled in dark grey uniforms had swept through the city and spared no one. Thousands of civilians had died before even the first part of the counterforce arrived.

The leader, recognizable by a flashy helmet easily to be confused with a hot red target mark, had been the worst of all. Not destroying, but wallowing in the sorrow of the people, cracking skulls and waving fleshless skin.  
He was the first one the Avengers attacked but yet the last one to fall. Turned out there was a reason he thought himself invincible enough to wear bright red; He actually was invincible.

Well, until Hawkeye cleverly shot the glowing stone of evil out of his claws. The army, later revealed to be drones, dropped to the floor that exact moment, just like the Chitauri many months before.

The leader himself was butchered after that. The concentrated rage of eleven of the Avengers very literally tore him into pieces. The memory of it still was fresh, even after all this time. A repulsor blast had seared a hole through the extra terrestrial's armour, through his skin and right into his heart, located neatly just below the throat. Little strings of muscle and flesh hung into the clean burned hole and there was a sickening sound of steel ripping through thick cellular mass as Dare Devil sliced the leader's body.

The Avengers had been ruthless on this one. It had been hard to gather anything about him in autopsy because he had been so severely destroyed. Tony guessed it must have been the frustration at having failed. Because even while the enemy had been defeated, dozens of thousands of innocents had died.

The stone had been given to him to keep in custody, mainly because no S.H.I.E.L.D. official had been in range and Tony was the only present Avenger to possess a high security vault. After that, transport had been deemed too risky and Tony hadn't spared a single look at it ever since.  
He took a sip of his drink. And another one. And maybe he then emptied his whole glass in one swing. Maybe he needed that. But quite surely he wasn't going to think about it. "How trying to be a better human ruined my happiness completely" wasn't a good topic to think about and neither was "I drank more in two months than Howard did in a lifetime."

He felt a bit unsure, so he poured himself a double. Reassuring his brain that there would be more always seemed to calm him.  
Scientific objectivity came to him easier after that. He was measuring and documenting in no time.  
The first few minutes were boring - weighing, determining mass, etc.. The stone had a greater mass than even gold, but otherwise seemed rather normal if you ignored the obnoxious glowing.

Things became exciting though when Tony tried to take energy readings. The stone fried his fucking machine. The machine that had survived the glowstick of destiny and the tesseract. It was fascinating to say the least and offered a lot of interesting questions. Like why Tony didn’t look like overdone kentucky fried chicken yet. If the stone managed to kill wires as resilient as this, it should have done the same to his blood vessels. Or anyone else’s, for that matter. The riddle offering itself was absolutely thrilling, broken machines be damned, and Tony probably would have gone on for hours, if it hadn’t been for Jarvis suddenly speaking up.

„Sir, you might want to take a break while I process the data gathered by the surrounding visual and thermal receptors. May I recommend watching your prisoner in the meantime?“

Tony had originally been planning on annoying Jarvis until the results were done, but his AI’s suggestion captured his interest.

„Why? Pagan Blood ritual in process?“ Tony considered Jarvis’ following silence to be the robot equivalent of an annoyed huff. The AI didn’t seem too annoyed though, considering he made the screen next to the more comfortable chair light up. Tony gratefully took his seat, picking up his glass.  
The image greeting him was confusing. It took him a second to comprehend the situation entirely; All the books had been taken from the shelves and lay in seemingly organized piles arranged like a wall of pillars around one spot in the corner. Loki sat amidst it all, reading a book open in his lap. Zooming closer, Tony recognized it to be a copy of a regular modern history book.

Tony was torn. On one hand, he didn’t want to be inhumane and take away Loki’s only mean of entertainment, on the other, it was also risky to let Loki gather too much information. Too much of the wrong kind could be really dangerous and he didn’t really want a potentially violent and insane Loki getting inspiration from Hitler.

Tony tentatively skipped to another camera’s angle and zoomed in on the page Loki was viewing. He almost laughed when he spotted the chapter’s name. Marxism. There definitely were worse topics to study for someone from a feudal warrior society. Maybe this letting Loki read thing wasn’t that bad. It would be okay, if Tony had a way to know and under certain circumstances control what he was reading. 

He felt an idea budding in his mind. Had it not been for Jarvis interrupting him, he would have started to work on it right there. However, it did not take Tony very long to realize that both the visual and thermal readings of the stone were utterly useless. It was a pity, but at least he had another project to distract him from it. 

„Jarv, get the replacement parts for your deep fried buddy over there, this won’t work without him.“ He pulled up the screen with Loki’s image again. „And open a copy of the STARKindle source code in the projects folder, I got plans.“

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there,
> 
> PoV change will be a regular thing now. One Tony, One Loki. Mainly because I realized that this story is pretty much untellable if I only use one PoV. Sorry for the wackiness.
> 
> On another note, thank you all for your support. It means a lot to me.

Loki felt endlessly relieved to finally hear the door close behind Stark. The moment he was sure to be temporarily rid of his jailor, he bent over, coughing, hoping to get out whatever rest of slime and blood was stuck in his throat and had made it hard to breathe.

Maybe he wouldn’t need to kill himself, after all. Maybe his body would take care of this all by itself over time. He coughed a few more times and watched the blood collect in his hands.

It had been immensely stupid to not show any more weakness when Stark had been around. Pity was the key to trust and lessened torture, so he really should have made a tragic show of his injuries. In the past, he surely would have.

He didn’t understand why he hadn’t just done it again. Having to swallow his pride hardly was anything new to him. It briefly occurred to him that maybe it was different this time because he really was as pathetic as he acted. He pushed the thought away in discomfort.

He distracted himself by reseating himself on the edge of the bed and finally taking in the room he was held in. The furniture was sparse, but rather nice. Most of it was made of dark wood and struck a stark contrast to the smooth white walls so typical for Midgard. The large bed took up the majority of the room and was rivaled in size only by the book shelf. Loki rejoiced at the sight of it. It had been a long time since he’d last held a book in his hands. He hoisted himself up, not really caring that his body hurt all over.

It was enormously satisfying to stroke the back of a book again after all that time. He gingerly let his hand ghost over a row, not really looking for anything but simply enjoying the feeling of it. It didn’t matter that these books were tiny and scarcely adorned, or that they smelled of the plastic Midgardians seemed to be so incredibly fond of, what mattered was that they were there and filled to the brim with wonderful, beloved knowledge.

Loki pulled one of the thicker tomes out of the shelf, examining it, flicking through some pages. It was a history book, as it seemed, focusing on small print letters and hardly any pictures. It was different from what he was used to, but the idea appealed to him immediately. The less time wasted with glorified pictorial perceptions of battle, the better.

He paused at the sight of a familiar figure. From the seam of a page concerning itself with the year 1940, Captain America smiled ahead. Loki had seen the man in the news footage they had shown him at Shield. The photo and the video might as well have been from the same year, considering Captain America looked exactly the same in both.

Disquieting notions en masse spread themselves over Loki’s mind. It was absolutely impossible for a Midgardian not to age over a span of fifty years. There was no way Shields footage could have been genuine. At least none that he could think of.

He sent his gaze over the page in search for an explanation, but there was none. There were mentions of a „super soldier serum“ that had heightened both physical and mental capabilities of the recipient, yet there were no specifications regarding aging and lifespan. Considering the Midgardians’ fascination with longevity and immortality, they surely would have mentioned it. It was uncertain, though, so he had no other way than searching for a second source. It would have to be another history book.

The moment he raised his hand towards the shelf, however, a wave of nausea hit him. He stayed on his feet with some effort, but he could not stop the blackness protruding his field of vision. There was no room for thoughts as he did nothing but wait for it all to stop. 

It took him a surprisingly long while to get over the wave. When he did, he had already realized that he could not remain standing much longer. Loathe as he was to admit it, his body lacked blood and nourishment. Those were the pains of a mortal body, after all. He piled a number of books onto his right arm then and carried them to the nearest corner, where he set them down and seated himself aside them.

The pile was unorganized and, considering his recent luck, probably contained not a single history book, but he told himself that he would simply get another pile if this one proved to be worthless.

It occurred to him that Stark might burst in any second and take away the books outragedly, but he decided to take the risk. It would probably be worth it, even if it meant getting a whipping, or whatever was popular on Midgard at the time.

Time passed quickly as he read and Captain America soon came to be of secondary interest to him. He had never before seen such a diversity of genres and found himself immersed in an abundance of stories. He took a particular liking to several unfamiliar sorts of fiction, as they portrayed Midgardian customs casually and were sure to prove helpful at some later point. For a similar reason, he found he could not take his eyes off human ideologies, either.

What little he read about Captain America, he had discovered purely coincidentally. It was enough, though, to assure him in his assumption that something was amiss with Shield’s footage. Steve Rogers, the man behind Captain America, was born in 1920. Loki had already established from various books that the current Midgardian year must have been something after 2010, so Rogers would have been at least 90, had he still lived.

Which he apparently didn’t, as he had disappeared forever in 1942.

Another thing Loki had read about was CGI animation. It wasn’t hard to imagine how Shield had went upon creating the fraud.

Knowing _how_ they did it would not solve his problems, however. Not even the answer to the _why_  would matter, in the end. What did matter was that he still was caged and facing months of torture if he would not manage to escape soon.

His glance fell upon the books around him and he felt his features twist to a frown. Maybe it would be more than just a few months. Stark seemed to have a certain amount of control over Shield, so if he would really want to, he would be able to prolong the time Loki was forced to spend in his hand.

If Stark were to discover the insolence the former god had allowed himself by touching his jailors property, not to speak of how he’d shamelessly exploited the chance to profit of it, he surely would like to punish him most creatively.

He got up in a haste, not minding the nausea that engulfed him immediately. As far as he was concerned, Stark  could enter any second. Loki had been delusional to not properly consider the possible severity of the consequences. Jailors were not bound to reasonable punishments. If it would make sense for a court to decide on fifty lashes, it would be just as acceptable for a jailor to decide on one hundred and a raping.

Barely repressed fear fueled his actions as he quickly stashed away pile after pile, ignoring the pleadings of his body to stop. He cursed the norns everytime he felt his knees almost buckling or unconsciousness trying to get a hold of him.

 He worked effectively, considering his state. It turned out to be not fast enough, though, as a knock sounded from the door. Loki froze for a moment before slowly putting the book he’d been holding onto the shelf. A sense of dread filled him to the brim and he turned to face the door. There was no sense in checking how many books were still on the floor. There were some, too many to carry in one go. Just enough to be dooming.

„I’m coming in,“ Stark announced from the outside, and his good natured politeness seemed terribly out of place.

Loki forced impassivity on his expression as he heard the lock click open. Time seemed to slow down as the door opened and Stark came into view, outright swaggering into the room.

He seemed in high spirits, and he was carrying three worryingly unidentifiable boxes.

The first thing he did upon coming to a halt in front of his prisoner was eying him somewhat curiously. He then proceeded to laugh and Loki felt the strong urge to flee or punch Stark or possibly do both.

 His jailor, however, seemed unconcerned.

„You look like a ghost,“ he declared. „Better sit down before you fall over.“

Loki remained standing. Stark shrugged. „Well, as you like. Don’t think I’ll catch you.“ And then sat down. Which was completely absurd, considering the situation. Loki stared at him in puzzlement before slowly seating himself, too. He had no idea what had led Stark to lower himself before his lesser, but it couldn’t mean anything good.

He watched cautiously as Stark opened two of the boxes slightly, peering inside. A pleasent but unfamiliar smell spread from them. /Food?/

One of the boxes was passed to Loki, but he did not open it immediately. Instead, he searched his jailor’s face for an explanation. Nutrition as obviously good as this was not something a prisoner would normally get.

Stark was focused on his own box, though. Loki watched as the man fumbled with two wooden sticks he’d wrought from a paper packaging.

Faint memories of a short visit on Midgard many centuries ago resurfaced and Loki felt some of the tension leave him. While the current situation of course was no less dire than before, remembering scaring the arrogant emperor with dragon fire didn’t fail to have at least a minute calming effect.

It didn’t look like Stark was going to raise his glance from his food any time soon, so Loki decided to go ahead and use this chance as long as he had it. Unpacking the food, he stopped. There was something odd about the meal, but Loki was sure he’d seen it on Midgard before. He eyed it suspiciously.

„‚s Mie Goreng,“ Stark informed him suddenly. Loki startled, as he had not noticed his jailor watching him. He shot the man a glance and had to suppress a hysterical laugh - for all the terrifying prospects Iron Man brought with himself, he sure looked ridiculously non threatening when there were strands of food hanging from his mouth.

Sobering up at remembering said prospects, Loki redirected his attention at the box of „Mie Goreng“ in his lap. It was obvious that Stark wasn’t planning on punishing him right then, so there would be no harm in not watching the man constantly.

The food was surprisingly good. Unfamiliar, but definitely with its own charm. The sticks didn’t take a very long time to get used to, either. While the circumstances of the meal weren’t really supreme, Loki still enjoyed it. The last time he’d eaten anything even remotely dignified had been before he’d fallen from Asgard. He was still hungry when he finished, but he decided not to stretch his luck by asking for more and instead looked up at Stark.

The man paused when he noticed.

„That was fast,“ he remarked, swallowing. „Didn’t they feed you at Shield?“

Loki swallowed, too, though merely to get his dry throat working again. He didn’t know how to answer. As far as he was aware, they hadn’t given him anything to eat. But would Stark want to know? For lack of a better answer, he remained silent and looked downwards. If he would not be able to give a satisfactory answer, he’d at least pretend to show humiliation.

From the corner of his eye, Loki saw Stark putting his box down. The sound of chewing ceased.

„I take it they didn’t,“ Stark assessed. When Loki again chose not to answer, the man gave a sigh.

„Swallowed your tongue?“, he asked, his tone of voice not unpleasant. Which was odd and bordering on cynical considering the nature of his quip. Loki had heard enough jokes about his silver tongue for a life time.

„Obviously,“ he answered, much more venomously than he had intended. He looked up at his jailor again, hoping to not have enraged him.

 Stark however seemed to take it with humour, though, both hands raised as if to signal being unharmed.

„Woah there. Sorry.“ Loki wasn’t sure if the man was mocking him or if this was just another of his various confusing speech patterns. Either way it would be wiser to leave the rest of the talking to him and only speak when asked to.

 Stark grimaced.

„Okay, look. I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re probably not the crazy alien emperor from New York. At least not completely. I mean you might be him but just later and with a lot of brainwash.

Or you might be playing us all, what do I know.“

The man raked a hand through his hair, looking kind of confused.

„Point is, you’re innocent unless proven guilty and I’ll treat you that way. I mean the whole no-innocents-in-prison deal excluded, but I can’t really do much about that. Just, as long as you’re not being an ass, I won’t be either. I think we can agree on that. Can we?“

 Loki nodded automatically though knowing that Stark probably hadn’t meant half of what he’d said.   _Labrat_ , he remembered.

 „Okay, so I have a peace offering,“ the man said, pulling the last of the boxes onto his lap. Opening it, he produced a small board of metal and glass.

„Behold, the STARKindle, named so after its very humble inventor.“, Stark announced, passing the board to his prisoner.

It looked like it was an electrical device, so Loki turned it around a few times, looking for the obligatory button to turn it on.

Sure enough, he found it.

The glass part, _screen_ , as he reminded himself, lit up immediately after activation.

„Look at that, you’re a natural,“ Stark exclaimed joyously. Loki twitched when the man suddenly reseated himself next to him, excitedly moving the interface by rolling his finger over it, while obviously not caring a bit about personal space.

„It’s actually pretty self explanatory; Tap a button, the thing does what the button says. Like this,“ - Stark tapped the rectangle labeled as library - „Will lead you to the library.“

A list of titles appeared on the screen. Loki assumed them to be names of books, as he was sure he recognized at least one from having skipped through it earlier.

„I already filled it a bit, but if you want more, you can go back by clicking here and then go to the store. Don’t worry I won’t charge you. The kindle is linked to Wikipedia, by the way, so if you don’t understand something just do this motion over the term,“ -he demonstrated- „and the article will come up. Pretty cool, huh?“

Loki didn’t care how ‚cool‘ it was. Because of course it was amazing, of course it was everything he could possibly wish for, but that was just it. It was too good to be true.

And as he caught sight of Stark’s smug expression, he knew that he was right.

„To what price?“ he asked his jailor, fearing the worst.

Stark grinned.

„Glad you asked. How about the truth?“

 


End file.
